San Martín v. Bolívar: new film sheds fresh light on a meeting of national heroes
Points: 9
Written by Nicolás Capelli and Álvaro Arostegui, and starring Pablo Echarri and Anderson Ballesteros, the upcoming movie release El encuentro de Guayaquil (“The Meeting of Guayaquil”) is an adaptation of writer and historian Pacho O’Donnell’s play of the same name. It concerns the famous meeting between Argentine General José de San Martín and Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar on July 26, 1822, in the city of Guayaquil (Ecuador) during the revolutionary campaigns to free Argentina, Chile, Perú, Bolivia, Ecuador and Panamá from Spanish rule.
Not much is known about the meeting, but it’s a fact that San Martín’s political status in Peru was deteriorating and he needed help from Bolívar — who had a strong political and military support — to turn his fortune around. O’Donnell’s play imagines a possible dialogue between the two national heroes as it delves into Latin America’s history and reveals many layers that have to do with its arduous process toward independence.
Just like the play, Capelli’s feature renders a humanized version of these two famous national heroes. Forget what you’ve learned in your school textbooks about righteous, infallible men who led a spotless life, did no wrong and never doubted themselves whatsoever. Forget all about bronze figures and welcome flesh and blood men who, as O’Donnell recently told the Herald in an interview, even wondered more than once whether they acted out of a true desire to free countries or if perhaps they were dominated by a lust for power. Being as human as they were, their sexual exploits are not brushed aside. Moreover, San Martín’s addiction to opium rooted in the acute physical pain he suffered is also clearly exposed.
The heroes in El encuentro de Guayaquil belong to the realm of historic revisionism, and as such they are seen under a different light than that of the official version story of Argentina’s history. And though Capelli’s film transforms a 75-minute dialogue-based play into 100-minute cinematic piece with some 65 actors, it still keeps the entire source material without making any changes. Or, better said, it expands the play’s scope as it adds some more weight to the characters’ background and provides more details and nuances.
In tune with a revisionist approach and unlike a large number of period pieces, El encuentro de Guayaquil is not one of those films where solemn characters speak artificially and sound distant and unreachable. Capelli has coached his actors to say their lines as naturally as possible, in a way that sometimes would stress the characters’ personalities more than convey the literality of the text per se. Of course, the dialogue is still written in a less colloquial manner than contemporary dialogue, but for a period piece it’s pretty modern.
A potential problem for adaptation of plays into films is that the film often ends up as what is called “filmed theatre,” which at best is an correct interpretation of the play in terms of its themes, but with little or no cinematic value. Luckily, that’s not the case with El encuentro de Guayaquil.
And there’s a main reason for this: the cinematography. Instead of going for frontal shots that render characters in a tedious series of shots and reverse shots in mandatory medium shots and close-ups, Capelli resorts to a more dynamic mise-en-scene that includes circular dolly shots as well as lateral and frontal travellings. He also uses the off-screen space for dramatic purposes and goes for in-depth composition of the frame so that you don’t have the feeling of watching it all from a static frontal point of view as you would if you were at the theatre.
Technically speaking, the lighting is top-notch, but what’s more important even is that it creates an atmosphere of its own, which changes as the film unfolds according to the twists in the plot. Or, better said, according to what happens in a largely human drama that never turns into a history lesson.
Production notes
El encuentro de Guayaquil (Argentina-Colombia, 2016). Directed by Nicolás Capelli. Written by Nicolás Capelli and Álvaro Arostegui, based on a play by Pacho O’Donnell. With Pablo Echarri, Anderson Ballesteros, Niara Awada, Arturo Bonin, Luciano Castro, Eva de Dominici, Juan Palomino. Cinematography by Sebastián Pereyra. Editing by Andrés Azcarate. Running time: 102 minutes.
@pablsuarez
