Lately, the figure of the bullfighter has fallen from its traditional pedestal as a cultural icon to create a link to the tabloid press. Historically, the bullfighter was celebrated for his bravery and skill in the arena, but today many have achieved greater fame, not so much for their bullfighting exploits, but for their personal lives, romances and their appearances in gossip magazines.
Growing opposition to bullfighting from animal rights activists and sectors of society that see value in it has not helped. an archaic and cruel tradition. Nor the suppression by the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, of the National Bullfighting Prize. But Albert Serra seems to have changed the situation with the documentary Lonely afternoons about Andrés Roca Rey, who was caught in the bullfight of the Autumn Fair that took place this Sunday in Las Ventas.
“It looked like a favorite, but there was also doubt as to whether a film festival at the time woke up (in San Sebastian, without going any further, there is no longer a distinction between the best actress and the best actor in the awards because there are no longer any genres) would dare to award the Golden Shell to a film like Afternoon of Solitude, as it did happened,” says Juan Sardá, critic of El Cultural.
Albert Serra defended himself against the complaints of PACMA or against the demonstration called by Podemos Euskadi to protest against the screening of the film during the event with a “let everyone do what they want, but I find it ridiculous to attack works of art. because they touch on a specific subject.” After the premiere at the irreverent and provocative Basque competition, the director declared during the presentation of the film in the United States that in reality, “bullfighting is boring”, that he doesn’t know anything about it and that “he doesn’t particularly like the subject.”
This did not prevent him from accumulating 600 hours of recording and making an ode to bullfighting, which is neither “easy nor pleasant”, underlines Enric Albero, critic of the series for El Cultural, because it does not skimp on blood and death, but “andIt is its filmic form which elevates the proposition” and transforms it into “an undeniable shell of gold.”
Serra takes a different perspective, exploring the figure of the bullfighter from a more anthropological or critical angle, moving away from traditional glorification and showing the tensions between life and death, but without romanticizing the violence of the spectacle. Serra’s vision seems to be more in line with a reflection on the role of the bullfighter as a tragic character, immersed in a ritual that many consider obsolete or cruel.
What artists like Picasso did at the time, for whom the bullfighter represented courage and resistance, but also inevitable sacrifice. His famous work The death of the bullfighter It is a clear reflection of this fascination, where the tragic moment of death in the arena is captured. Or Goya, in his engravings Bullfight (1816), where he represents with lights and shadows, the central technique of the paintings, the figure of the bullfighter as a solitary being who must confront nature in its wildest state.
In literature, there was not only Lorca with his painful Crying for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías or Hemingway with his novel Death in the afternoon who elevated bullfighting to the rank of art. The journalist Chaves Nogales, very justified in recent times thanks to the reissue of all his work, wrote one of the best biographies of the 20th century in Spain and it is about a bullfighter: Juan Belmonte, bullfighter.
The right-hander rubbed shoulders with the cultural elite of the time, from Ortega y Gasset to the Generation of 27, who saw in him a living representation of the tragic and heroic spirit that they sought to express in their works. A sort of icon to reflect on. “The solitude of the bullfighter is the solitude of the artist, his solitude at the top” writes Carlos Reviriego, film critic for El Cultural.
Because, “like all kings, the matador Roca Rey is a solitary being. It’s in the minibus, adored by its loyal crew, on its way to the square or back to the hotel after risking its life in the sand. He’s in the room, dressed in his wine and gold suit, or brooding over his impatience in the elevator, or putting his cap behind the burlap… his loneliness is the first thing you feel,” Reviriego explains. .
Even though the filmmaker revealed that Roca Rey, whom he barely knew before recording and with whom he has no relationship, He didn’t like the finished work, nor to his manager, which he attributes to the fact that “they don’t judge the film artistically, they judge themselves.” This gives the impression that the bullfighter seems to have come to his senses. meats this tradition which united culture and bullfighting.
