The first scene does not deceive: the opening credits end and a horse with two saddlebags – made of wicker – and a rider with a wide-brimmed hat advance through a gorge. Superimposed, the name of the film: La llegenda de l’Escanyapobres. Yes, Ibai Abad’s second film is a western based on the famous novel that Narcís Oller published in 1884 and, as befits any adaptation, they have taken the licenses they considered necessary, but it is still recognizable.
Abad remembers that it was in high school where, like so many students, he learned about the work, but with the financial and banking crisis of a few years ago it “resonated” with him because of the parallels it displayed. Then she found the elements that brought her closer in the western, starting with the arrival of the train to a remote town, with a protagonist, the Escanyapobres –in the film played by Àlex Brendemühl–, with a dark past that he wants to redeem.
But if Oller used the character of Doña Tuies – Laura Conejero – to structure the narrative, Abad has put the focus on Cileta – Mireia Vilapuig – mixing her with the maid, because “it served to create a natural narrative arc of a character who begins as very pure but, fascinated, she wants to get closer to the power that money represents,” she explains. Greed, corruption, which corrodes everything. In a society in which a woman needed a husband almost to exist, the question is: ‘Am I corrupt or do I escape?’, because women could only have freedom if they had money, and in this sense Oller’s efforts must be recognized. ”.
At the same time, placing the action in an invented town like Pratbell – although the writer was based in his native Valls – gives the film’s director a lot of freedom to create scenarios that “want to reflect an imaginary with one foot in the western and the other in the Mediterranean world, because of the idiosyncrasy and because here there is less wood and more stone.” Furthermore, “budgetary limitations meant that we always filmed in real locations, which was a success and gives a patina of worn-out aesthetics that favors the film.”
La llegenda de l’Escanyapobres, which can be seen today at the BCN Film Fest and is expected to be released in the fall, is also the narrative “of a journey into darkness”, because “we see how Escanyapobres holds goodness close, tries to redeem itself , but he cannot stop being who he is and drags the rest into the shadows, even literally, in a scene filmed inside a mine: “It was difficult to film because Brendemühl is claustrophobic and he came out on the first try, but the tension he transmits is very real,” Abad recalls.
Halfway through the film, the wind blows over the train track and makes a dry bush roll. Without a doubt: it is a western.
Catalan version, here
