Loving Pablo Directed by Fernando León de Aranoa

Loving Pablo

Directed by Fernando León de Aranoa

Starring: Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Peter Sarsgaard, Julieth Restrepo, David Ojalvo, Giselle Da Silva

Year: 2017

Country: Spain, Bulgaria

Author Review: Roberto Matteucci

"Colombia is full of beautiful women."

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born on December 1, 1949 in Rionegro, Colombia.

He died, hit by the army, on December 2, 1993 on the roof of a house in Medellín.

In the forty-four years between the two dates, we had seen the creation of a myth, because Escobar was the most terrible and famous drug dealer, and of a complex character, criminal and cruel.

When he was twenty years old, Pablo Escobar worked for a drug boss. It is the beginning of a brilliant career, will come to control the opulent cocaine market in the United States.

He earn half a million dollars a day and he challenged everyone with his luxurious exhibitionism as the construction of the Hacienda Nápoles, an enormous and excessive ranch.

In 1982, after an election campaign and many votes bought, he was elected to parliament. But after a documentary - broadcast by the BBC - showing him as a merciless drug dealer, he was forced to resign.

The consequence was a bloody war between the drug traffickers and the Colombian government.

Escobar organizes a paramilitary army, well armed, fierce and cruel. Hundreds of policemen were killed but he hit higher: Guillermo Cano journalist and director El Espectador, the justice minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla and even the presidential candidate of the Republic Luis Carlos Galán were killed.

President Reagan made the decision to fight drug trafficking violently, and the DIA intervened directly in Colombia. For fear of a possible extradition to the United States, Escobar chose a compromise with the Colombian authorities. He pleaded guilty to a crime committed in Colombia and was imprisoned in the Catedral, a sumptuous and exaggerated prison, which was built by himself.

Escobar understood a change in the attitude of the government, so he escaped from his own prison. The decline begins. Other drug cartels started a manhunt. Wanted by everyone, abandoned with only one bodyguard, he was spotted and killed by the army.

A true myth of evil, a perverse ideal, but the character Pablo Escobar acquires a special aura to be the protagonist of famous tv series. At the cinema, he arrives with Loving Pablo by the director Fernando León de Aranoa presented at the 74th Venice Film Festival.

Who was Escobar? A crazy, a madman, a bloodthirsty? A psychopath, an exhibitionist?

Of course, it was not a fool, the cartel of drug dealers was composed of dozens of clans and they would not have chosen a mentally ill.

Other reasons exist if so many screenwriters have become interested in his life, there must be more modern motivations such as the avant-garde of the polarization between good and evil that is fascinating for young people.

How does Fernando León de Aranoa see him?

Surely with a double personality, a dissociative identity disorder. He increases the contrast using Virginia Vallejo as the exact opposite, so he can emphasize the comparison.

We are in 1981. A private plane lands. She is wonderful woman comes down. This is Virginia Vallejo, a well-known announcer of Colombian television. She must interview Escobar.

Virginia is a classy woman, beautiful, rather snobbish. She is welcomed by Pablo with a lot of kindness in his theatrical ranch.

The first difference is obvious: she is beautiful elegant refined sought. Stride with Pablo, badly dressed, rough and aggressive attitudes. But Virginia finds Pablo charming and begins a relationship with him.

The cinematographic representation of this situation happens in the scene of the car trip, Pablo wants to show him his projects, let's say, social.

The camera is inside the car, with a subjective view we see some children play to the edge of the road. When they recognize Pablo in the car, they start to run behind greeting him festively. Clouds of dust rise from the road because it is not asphalted. Detach and the same scene is filmed in long shot and sideways field. The road is uphill and diagonally and divides the image. On the roadway, there is the same SUV and the same joyous guys. The two schizophrenic parts of the image show another message, the social one, the motivation for Pablo's popular success. Our vision is impressive, we are actually in a landfill. Tons of rubbish are in the down section, inside some people are looking for something to sell, along with the toxic fumes of the burnt garbage. In the up part, there is the same poverty. An abandoned and decadent shanty town. People live there sharing the space with a multitude of trash.

The scene continues symbolizing the film again.

Pablo arrives, is greeted by the children and answers by calling them by name. They will be his future army. On top of that mountain of trash, Pablo shows his plans to Virginia, building six hundred homes for his population. Behind they have a smiling and consenting priest, a symbol that the church and Escobar are together to defend the poor.

The camera of it lifts and you can see all of Medellín at the foot of the boss.

There are many dichotomies scenes for attitudes and contrasting characters have the same style. Pablo Escobar is the centre of all anomalies.

He loves his family, his wife, his children. His death came from the desire to talk with them. Their phone was intercepted.

Scenes representing dualism are many.

Also funny. During the imprisonment in the luxurious prison alternated on Saturday devoted to the family, on other days dedicated to business and to accommodate prostitutes. In one scene the bus with a lot of whores comes out of the gate and at the same time the cars with wife, relatives, come in.

The scene in which Pablo is hidden in the forest is distressing but equally significant. Poor families brought his underage daughters to him for little money. While he was meeting with a young girl, the camp was attacked by army helicopters. Pablo escapes naked into the forest, ridiculous in his decomposed walk. Around so many corpses including the miserable girl. He loved his underage children so much, but at the same time, he was a coward with the children of shortage people.

From the family, we pass to the popular love of the Colombians.

Pablo won the election, he is entering, accompanied by a crowd of supporters, but he is stuck: forbidden to enter without a tie and Pablo does not wear it. Dozens of hands are raised from the crowd with a tie, all offer their own. Pablo Escobar must enter parliament because he represents the people.

When the war against the police begins, the dead are thousands. It offers a reward for each policeman killed differentiated by the rank. It is a lot of money for the desperate families of Medellín.

They are distributing rifles and guns in a shanty town, people start shouting the blessing for the most beloved man: "Dio bendiga El Patrón". El Patrón, the master, is Pablo Escobar. Politics is far from people while Pablo is the only one to listen to them, help them, support them.

What is the role of Virginia?

It is the voice-over, tells her story. Her point of view is important, she knows both the intimacy, human, passionate Pablo, both the cruel, ruthless.

She is the witness of human bipartition, the nefarious image of falling in love with evil, of the wrong man.

Virginia is a woman full of haughty, refined, faces the events of her life with a strong feminine sensitivity. How can one escape from the abyss of being the lover of the most wanted man in the world?

She too will be a victim of Pablo. When she is fired, threatened, disgusted by her relationship with him, Virginia asks him to help her with some money, she needs to leave Colombia. But without mercy, Pablo rejected her like a whore.

The end is miserable, but the arrogance of the man remains always on top: superb, vain as his life has been.

He remains with only a person. Together they are hidden in a lousy room. The police have intercepted them, they are coming to the door. The director cuts out the scene with the two side walls, like in a theatre. A perspective opens up, at the bottom near a central window, the bodyguard, while Pablo appears in the side scene. He too stares at the door but he is in profile with a poor physical figure, a prominent belly, barefoot and neglected. A decline accentuated by disorder, with so many clothes thrown on the floor. On one side there is the door - where the director has positioned the camera - and on the other side, there is the window of the attempted escape and death.

This time, the news of his death has arrived, another cry rises, the opposite to the murderers, to the tragedies: "Viva Colombia!"

The film has its value in the precision and composition of beautiful scenes, with a purpose and a smart language. The director is strict, he has no doubts, but he realizes that if Pablo Escobar is evil, without any attempt at rehabilitation, on the other side there is a cultural political economic void. It is this amniotic fluid in which Pablo Escobar has been able to get rich, kill, become the biggest drug dealer in the world.

Note: Information on Pablo Escobar from the book Secret History of the Narcos by González Cecilia, original title Todo lo que necesitas saber sobre narcotrafico, translation Marta Lanfranco, First edition January 2018, Newton Compton editori, Rome