Like so many other filmmakers, the Argentine couple formed by María Alché and Benjamín Naishtat took advantage of the pandemic to give free rein to their creativity, in this case writing the script for Puan, a philosophical comedy about the defense of the public university that won the award for best script and best actor for Marcelo Subiotto at the last edition of the San Sebastián festival.
“The story was the result of two concurrent desires: to write a leading role for Subiotto, an actor who always played small roles and we believed he had potential for a leading role, and then the world of philosophy and the university were very familiar and we found them a lot of humor and counterpoints that are conducive to making a comedy,” says Naishat in a videoconference conversation with this newspaper. Furthermore, Alché, who is also an actress, studied at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters in Buenos Aires located on Puan Street in the Caballito neighborhood that gives its name to the film, and Benjamin’s father is a philosophy teacher at another public university.
Subiotto plays Marcelo Pena, a middle-aged philosophy professor whose professor and mentor dies unexpectedly. He believes that he will inherit his position, but suddenly Rafael Sujarchuk (Leonardo Sbaraglia), a brilliant colleague who works in Germany, appears to compete for the professorship. One represents tradition and the other, modernity. “They could almost be two sides of the same person. Rafael embodies that side that is attracted to flourishing outward, to international universities and publishing, which is seen as something special and superior because it comes from Europe, and Marcelo “He is someone who is more on the human scale of knowing his territory, someone who decided to stay in a place and build in it. I think we all also have within us those dilemmas of permanent movement or permanence,” says Alché, who is also an actress and He worked with Lucrecia Martel in The Holy Girl (2004). “And that contrast can make them work together,” she alludes to the personality of two men so different and at the same time so complementary that both Sabiotto and the seductive Sbaraglia build with affection and humor.
Marcelo’s character is going through a deep personal crisis. His wife is an activist who appears on television; His opponent Rafael is attractive, attracts people en masse to his master classes and has an actress girlfriend. But he is a professor who has to teach philosophy to a rich octogenarian lady because the precarious salary at the university is not enough. “How many people reach a certain age wondering if they have followed the direction they really wanted or have simply been led by a context or a routine without questioning their decisions much? Marcelo is at that moment because the death of his mentor activates the most serious questions. fundamental and many people identify with those dilemmas that sooner or later one faces,” admits Naishtat.
Puan is the filmmakers’ first comedy. “For today’s world we need more laughter and humor. It is a healthy exercise without making the treatment of the topics less serious. On the contrary, it seemed to us that philosophy and mortality were heavy topics and that the way to approach them was laughter as a strategy,” declares the director of History of Fear about a genre that serves as a political weapon to denounce the crisis that the film anticipated, released shortly before the elections that gave power to the far-right Milei, very critical of the values ??that defends the film. “Its reception acquired new readings and very great emotionality, very charged by a scenario that for many was unthinkable, an extreme right-wing government with a very intolerant bias that makes the public, the public university, the scapegoat for Argentine economic problems. public health, culture, a discourse that is not new and that has given Puan a strange place as a tool for political discussion.
To give greater truth to the story, the directors filmed in the same Puan faculty, inside their classrooms and with the same students acting as students. “There was a very real reality of the faculty every day. At times the extras mixed with the students and it gave it a very great truth,” admits Alché. And in those classrooms Marcelo and Sujarchuk vindicate philosophers like Spinoza, Plato, Rousseau, Heidegger or Hobbes. “I absolutely believe that today philosophy is more necessary than ever, although I do not believe that this implies that people sign up en masse to study at the university. There is no need. What we are lacking today in all areas is the exercise of philosophical thought, of making use of reason. In politics we would need advisors who provide both history and philosophy with tools to unravel this apocalyptic tangle in which humanity is getting into. Philosophy has tools and that is something that we wanted to put on stage with the film. It can be in the university and on the street. It is the bold step that we are needing. Taking the ideas from the university to the street,” concludes Naishtat.”
