“The bar”, the film that uncovers the nature of the human being

The last two films by Bilbao filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia came almost hand in hand, The bar and Perfect strangers They were released in 2017, although their impact was very different. While the first obtained a somewhat more discreet collection, the second became the director’s highest-grossing film. Perhaps, the plot of the remake is more attractive to the mass public, but the truth is that it loses, in some way, the essence of the director. The baron the contrary, is much closer to the peculiar style that Álex de la Iglesia has accustomed us to.

A beastly, crazy and violent style where the worst instincts come to light. De la Iglesia feels comfortable in that neighborhood bar and in that grotesque setting where the action will lead.. It is in his environment, in the key to his cinema and his success. Something that, on the other hand, works a little against them; That comfort makes him trust, trust too much in his film and that anything, no matter how improbable and repetitive, can succeed.

De la Iglesia has us very accustomed to a choral and diverse cast that works really well. But he usually limps in the endings, in the closing of his films. The succession of crazy events can be fascinating, but it can also fall into an absurdity that is difficult to bear. Personally, I can say that The bar It is an enjoyable, entertaining film with a really attractive plot. However, it can become tiring, becoming a film that fails to shine within the filmmaker’s filmography, which becomes “more of the same.”

One normal morning, in the center of gigantic Madrid, a group of people have breakfast without any problems in a bar. Some know each other, others are passing through. Suddenly, normality is interrupted by the tragedy: someone has just been shot dead outside the bar. The urban chaos has disappeared, the city seems deserted and this group of characters is trapped inside the bar.

The bar It has an interesting plot, goes in depth and draws the characters well. As if it were a reflection of society, De la Iglesia has managed to capture the truth behind the mask. The nature that we hide behind the roles we play in society.

The Bar, a non-place

The bar we see in the film is a bar like any other, without any special charm. That bar where people from the surrounding area come to have breakfast in the morning or people who, like Elena, will never set foot there again. In that limited but known space, the characters that give life to the film will move..

Marc Augé is a French anthropologist who is credited with creating the term non-place. What exactly is a non-place? A place of passage, a place where identity is not manifested, an artificial communication space, which does not contribute anything to the individual. Augé identifies highways, hotel rooms, airplanes, etc. as non-places. That is, places where we will stay for a short time, with which we will barely interact and from which we will hardly extract meaningful relationships.

The non-place is contrasted with the anthropological place, the place where identity resides. Non-places are spaces of transit, in constant movement. Spaces with which contemporary society is more than plagued. Whether or not a space is a non-place is something totally subjective. It will depend on what this means for each individual and the degree of interaction we have with them. There are those who see these spaces as a kind of crossroads, of exchanges.

So, The setting of Álex de la Iglesia’s film is a bar with considerable flux and change. A non-place within the framework of the city that does not stop growing and moving, a place of anonymity for many and a refuge for others. In this way, we meet Elena, a young woman who enters the bar only to charge her cell phone; and Trini, a client who comes every day to play the slot machine.

Elena and Trini are not the only characters who are in the small space, but a total of 8 characters will remain locked in it. Álex de la Iglesia has already shown his taste for claustrophobia, for locking a group of people in a place from which they will not be able to leave and where they will experience extreme situations.. Along these lines, it has given us titles such as The Community either My great evening and, for obvious reasons, the film He Bar has not escaped comparisons with one of the greats on the national scene: He angel exterminator (1962) by Luis Buñuel.

He Bar It starts in a small space where the conversations are not too deep; a place that, for each character, represents something different. A space that will remain frozen in the face of the frenetic pace of the contemporary city.

The choral cast as a representation of society

The bar It is a good caricature of modern-day Spain, as it perfectly depicts the customs of our society.. The characters are very diverse: a homeless man; a posh young woman, but tremendously insecure; a normal-looking, middle-aged woman with gambling problems; a young man hipster; a former police officer who was expelled due to his alcoholism problems; etc

As the situation becomes more desperate, the characters will show themselves as they really are.. The Spanish philosopher Eugenio Trías spoke about these issues in his work Philosophy and Carnival. For Trías, we act in relation to conventions, to the roles that society itself has given us. These roles are multiple, we do not act the same in all situations nor do we project the same image.

This is precisely what we appreciate in the case of the film. Following the example with which we began, that of Elena, we see that the young woman does not act the same when she talks on the phone with her friend as she does when entering the unknown bar. Likewise, All the characters present a certain duality: the image they project, versus the secrets they hide from others..

This masked ball is a reflection of our world, of the bars we frequent daily, of modern cities in which identities are increasingly multiple.. Curiously, the character whose identity remains most stable at all times is Israel, the homeless man. Israel does not seem to belong to the same world as the rest, he shows himself as a man who will have had countless problems in his past, but at no time does he try to deceive us.

As the situation becomes desperate, all the characters will fight to survive, for their individual survival, regardless of that of others. In the midst of this “every man for himself,” the masks will dissolve, showing the hypocrisy that our world contains.. However, Israel does not get rid of its mask or, at least, it does so to a lesser extent; because? Simply because Israel does not strive to please anyone, it does not want to project a distorted image of itself.

Are those we exclude more authentic? Israel is already in a desperate situation, already fighting daily for its survival; Therefore, he is, in some way, excluded from society and, as a consequence, lacks a mask. Between the eschatological, the comic and the tragic, The bar envelops us in a demonstration of nature in its purest state, in its most animal state. A situation in which the survival instinct prevails over morality and social norms. By unmasking the characters, we witness the worst facet of the human being, the nature of our being in the face of an extreme situation.

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