Soldados de Salamina

Trueba's 'Soladados de Salamina' is an interesting interpretation of the Spanish Civil War. The story is about a professor/writer who's in search of facts regarding a particular event that took place during the war. Her initial curiosity turns into determination to find the information. The film starts off a little slow but picks up in the second half. Some of the war scenes are shown as live footage which adds an authenticity. I wonder why Trueba chose to execute the entire film with washed out colour? Some of the locales, which would have looked great in colour, look pale. Pretty much everything looks gloomy and lacking in colour. The score is smooth and used efficiently. The cinematography excels in places. Ariadna Gil does a terrific job in portraying Lola. The character itself isn't very likable as is evident in her interaction with others, especially Concha. But by the end we see that she has gone through a transformation and Gil does that wonderfully. She is further brilliantly supported by Maria Botto and Diego Luna. Even though 'Soldados de Salamina' is a little tedious in the beginning, the story has heart and in the end, the viewer is moved by it's spirit.

When the professor and writer Lola Sánchez (Ariadna Gil) is assigned to write a column in the newspaper about the Spanish Civil War, she researches and finds for the first time about the shooting of Rafael Sánchez Mazas (Ramon Fontserè). Lola has lost her passion for writing, and she becomes intrigued about Rafael, who was a writer and journalist that returned to Spain from the Italy of Mussolini and founded the fascist party Spanish Falange, becoming adviser of the leader Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera. When the lefts won the election in 1936, the Falange became illegal, and later there was a military coup d'stat. Rafael miraculously escaped from the shooting and was spared by an unknown soldier. Lola decides to write a book about the historic event and to disclose the identity of the unknown soldier. But her acquaintance Conchi (María Botto) advises that her work is affected by her lack of passion. When Lola reads a work of a student about the heroic former soldier Miralles (Joan Dalmau), Lola becomes obsessed to find him and see of he is connected to the event.

"Soldados de Salamina" is a great movie that discloses parts of the dark period of the Civil War in Spain in an excellent screenplay, with two parallel stories, one fictional in the present days and the other true in 1939. Like the lead character, I just know very few things about this bloody war and I had never read anything about Rafael Sánchez Mazas, therefore I had the chance to learn a little about the history of this nation. I believe that the last movie I saw of Ariadna Gil was "Los Peores Años de Nuestra Vida", and I am glad to see this gorgeous actress in another excellent performance. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Soldados de Salamina" ("Soldiers of Salamina")

Not really. "Soldados de Salamina" it's not a great novel, from my point of view. And like the main character, never gets to close to the real drama of the Spanish Civil War, except in two or three things. And we've got the same conflict with the film, besides the changes after the screen adaptation. I think it's a good movie for people who doesn't know too much about the Spanish Civil War, specially some scenes, when the journalist can talk with the old republican fighter it's a great moment, the best in the whole film. But the movie goes in and out of many nonsense, like the "modern gipsy" (a nice and great interpretation, but outside the movie, except for some relief for all the horror of the war we must face). And the narrative is bouncing without direction from start to end. Well, if you don't have any idea about the Spanish Civil War go ahead...if you know...you know

David Trueba's film is somewhat different from other Spanish movies about the Civil War of the 30s. Usually the stories are about the heroes of the left side, who were defeated at the end, while this story is about one of the Fascists whose life is spared by a militiaman that in theory was his enemy.

I must confess that not having read the original novel, I have no basis of comparison, but the theme about knowing what really happened in that particular episode the young reporter is trying to discover is intriguing.

This is a part documentary, part fiction and a tale from the real survivors of the conflict. We don't get to know what really happened until the very end of the film as the old soldier in the nursing home meets the writer who has gone to him to find out first hand the truth.

The director seems to be saying that heroes were the ones that had the decency to live by what their conscience dictated, rather than by what they were told to do.

David Trueba makes a lot more sense of the novel than did Javier Cercas when he wrote it. The novel is like an endless loop of the author telling the story of how the fascist Rafael Sánchez-Mazas escaped execution. In the novel, this brief historical episode is repeated endlessly, to the point of it being maddeningly repetitive. The film spares us this repetition just as the fascist's life was spared.

The pity was that the fascist Rafael Sánchez-Mazas didn't die in a firing squad. The typical path of cowards is to foment war and then conveniently side-step and actual combat. Dick Cheney, Donald Trump, George Bush are only a few modern examples.

The movie, like the book, chronicles a reporter's investigation into how the above-mention fascist escaped a firing squad in the waning days of the Spanish Civil War, and the story about how a Republican soldier spared his life when he was discovered in the woods near the site of the failed execution. Why did the soldier not kill or capture the fascist? I don't find that a particularly interesting question, certainly not enough for a novel, bit almost enough for a decent film.