It’s quite fitting that the opening shot of Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Realm features a man anxiously answering a phone on the edge of Spain’s Mediterranean coastline, as it immediately recalls his recent Oscar-nominated live action short Mother. In a single room, with just a distraught mother attempting to find her stranded 6-year old with a single call as their only connection, Sorogoyen expertly placed the audience within a vice and preceded to tighten the grip for a full 19 minutes, so there was always a curiosity if he could maintain that level of tension within a full-length feature.
With The Realm, which recently cleaned up at the 33rd Goya Awards (Spain’s Oscars), he displays himself as a master of the sleight of hand; able to create dread in daytime and anxiety in the dead of night. His second feature deceitfully begins as a conventional and thoroughly convoluted political drama – seemingly impenetrable at first – before eventually easing into a Hitchc*ckian thriller that makes fine emotional use of our understandable terror of going to prison – whether we’re a crooked politician or not.
The Days of Wine and Roses
After his beachside phone-call, cinematographer Alex de Pablo employs one of his many long takes, following regional vice-secretary Manuel Lopez Vidal (a terrific Antonio de la Torre) back to a lavish restaurant where his group of associates continue to live the high life (its visual similarities to Goodfellas are apt), continuing their day of wise-cracks and wine, sustained by a lifetime of political fraud and public ignorance. These facets are all shattered when a scandal erupts regarding land rezoning in one of the provinces, which potentially threatens exposing the corrupt party leadership of Madrid, thus Vidal is fingered as the fall guy, a poor position that he refuses to settle with.
Adjusting his selfish desires from his infinite wants to his basic needs, Vidal kick-starts a one-man mission to avoid jail cost at any cost; even if it means selling out ever single person close to him (both geographically and emotionally) to slip out of the tightening noose that has been draped around his neck. It’s like Sidney Lumet’s Prince of the City, both in technical talent and narrative complication, but Sorogoyen’s script (co-written with Isabel Peña) cunningly inserts the audience gradually into the flowering of his captivating story, whether you’re familiar with Spanish politics or not, you’re bound to get wound up in Vidal’s narcissistic pursuit for immunity.
From Drama To Thriller
“Power Protects Power” becomes the mantra between the various politicians and people that he frantically pinballs between; as when the facade of friendship has faded, everyone is out to save themselves and they’re all ready to play dirty to do so. When the back-stabbing between associates becomes literal, The Realm really works, beginning with a masterful sequence where Vidal desperately tries to steal a loaded ledger from the home of an old colleague.
Haunted by a streak of bad luck, he unluckily chooses to do so in the midst of an underage house party, when its drunken attendees (including an anxious daughter keen to keep the event a secret) increasingly become aware of Vidal’s true intentions – all delivered in a (forged) one take that draws the audience in until they’re practically on the edge of their seats, delivering the greatest pleasures that the thriller genre can reward an attentive viewer: actual anticipation!
In this heated political climate, it may be understandable if viewers are not willing to accept a crooked politician, one who rarely shows signs of remorse, as the relatable lead who we hope “succeeds” by the climax (especially being a privileged, older white male too). Like any great anti-hero story – The Wolf of Wall Street being a prime example – Vidal knows he’s a bad man, and Sorogoyen is willing to make him go through hell to atone for his sins. If he’s to be the messianic figure to Spain‘s intrinsic political systems – which involves politicians, news networks and corporate businesses – then the film questions if the global political corruption we’re facing is occurring because of unfixable, broken power structures that use politicians as puppets, or if the politicians are the puppeteers, and nobody is willing to give up the cosy gig anytime soon.
These themes are practically spelt out in the film’s controversial final scene, which literally directs these questions straight to the audience and refuses to give them any easy answers – like any good debate, we’re given two sides and left to ponder where we lie on the issue. This is quite the inverse to its beginning, which throws the viewer in the deep end of modern Spanish politics and refuses to spell out the specific layout of who each character is and how they relate to each other. But these blind spots slowly dissipate once the focus is sharply tuned into Vidal’s exploits, and The Realm becomes one of the year’s best thrillers, something which has the potential to really leave a mark once given proper international distribution.
The Realm: Conclusion
With several tight thrillers under his belt now, all we can hope for is when Hollywood gets their hands on Sorogoyen – and they will – he gets free reign. It’s rare to see a contemporary political noir like The Realm that doesn’t feature a single fire-arm, and with a climactic confrontation that settles things with an unsubtle verbal exchange regarding ideology and the hypocrisy of what we’ve just seen. It leaves audiences in a rare questioning position – which is more than you can say for most of the studio fare being offered to us at multiplexes at this current time.
What are some of your favourite Spanish titles? Let us know in the comments!
The Realm will be released in Australian cinemas on the 16th May 2019, details about session times can be found here.
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