In the world of the sometimes manic search for shortcuts and the fastest possible diagnoses, it could be said (with some caution) that the Spanish film Good boss (The good boss), which, with a noticeable delay, finally reached a wider cinema distribution in our country last week, brings another variation to the contemporary view of the story about the applied techniques of ruling, and then often manipulating subordinates, a view that, well, does not necessarily be completely devoid of spirit and charm. However, this film by screenwriter and director Fernando Leon de Aranoa, like any healthy and proper, and above all excellent film, in the narrative plane under the pretext of a smaller, more reduced story about concrete characters in an equally detailed situation, which of course must be well unusual in relation to the expected and already used many times, it presents and introduces the viewer to a significantly more comprehensive and relevant story, with all the above-mentioned shots to show from as fresh and interesting a view as possible "speak" something meaningful, and why not witty and entertaining about human nature, the dominant natures of this or that moment in which the given story takes place, and then consequently also about human courage.
Fernando Leon de Aranoa this time they do it in the form and guise of a comedy (as the film progresses with increasingly dark values, but still in the safe manner of a lively and charming comedy of nature), with the focus on Julio Blanco, the owner and manager of a small family empire in the form of a functional and successful factories of various scales for accurate measurement. Him in Good boss (which is the height that becomes his obsessive goal until the last sequences of the story and the film) we actually very often find in what is clearly one of the turning points in his career - his profitable enterprise is only a few steps away from winning another one in a really long series of social and/or or guild recognitions (and throughout the film De Arano prepares us for this with the scene of a wall in Juli's home with a carefully separated place for the new reward that, as expected, should arrive soon, which is the current neuralgic point in, one would say, the managed-calm life of Blanco). In order to secure the so-called victory, Blanko (in a loose translation, that surname would sound metaphorically and stiltedly meaningful - Prazniković) is determined to solve all the current problems in the lives of his workers and associates, and there aren't any of them... The screenwriter-director already shows in this regard class and an enviable author's and performer's form - with subtle steps and expertly graded and in the right places rhythm of storytelling, he widens the narrative visor, and from that with a solid and convincing foundation of problematic and comedy nature Good boss skilfully and elegantly grows into a story with a much wider and meaningfully more suggestive background, and the story gets new twists and turns - Julio thus gets a good opportunity for a new adultery, and even with a much younger intern, the dismissed employee takes his fast-moving rebel bus right in front of the entrance to it an enterprise that Julio sees as tangible proof of the possibility of the existence of at least a semblance of harmony and seemingly doomed altruism for everyone, always and everywhere, while the frame for the portrait of the main actor of this story expands more and more to include sufficiently clear indications of ossified and irreparable narcissism, under or above everything else, embodied in the burning and certainly authoritative need to be unquestioningly loved, with a desperate steel grip on the heights that everything should be controlled, and especially what should not concern the "owner" of that frantic urge, as well as what would further should remain far beyond the scope of interest of that undisputed and enraged master of all nearby destinies.
The last sentence should be illustrative enough to show us exactly what it is Good boss makes it meaningfully relevant for this ours now, therefore, beyond the borders of Spain and its cultural satellites. Julio Blanco, in the playful and energetic interpretation of the visibly tired, even somewhat disinterested and imprisoned in the jaws of his own mannerism Javier Bardem in recent years in American productions, although before the eyes of the audience he grows into an increasingly dark and pernicious temptation, still retains an unquestionable appearance until the end, perhaps and a typical offshoot of his era, especially when considering the varieties that appear there, in the upper/higher spheres of decision-making. Blanco simply has to rule the situation and the destinies of others, it is an intention and a habit that has grown deep into the very core of his debatable, candid and sociopathic character. It could be said that something like that (of course, in the form of mere coincidence and synchronicity) had the Nobel laureate Olga Tokarchuk in her essay About Daimonion and other writerly motivations in the collection Gentle story teller (translated by Milica Markić, recently published by the Official Gazette), when he points out the following: "Today there is a completely different philosophy - take matters into your own hands, even when they are not very skilled and hard-working, it is important that they are easily squeezed into a fist. You hold all the strings yourself, be the smith of your own destiny, measure so that it is right for you - such and similar slogans have almost turned into a categorical imperative, which, however, made many unhappy. You didn't make it? It's your own fault - you were insufficiently determined, capable, too lazy..."
Fernando Leon de Aranoa reaches his goal without sacrificing anything relevant, neither for the story, which he managed to shape impeccably and in an enviable style, clean it of ephemerality and truisms and tell it, nor for the edge of his own satire, the target of which is the entire world organized according to the measure of the most uninteresting among us, not even by the final form of a film that works perfectly even when we put it on the scale on which the quality and importance of the creation whose authors should be measured managed to impose their works as repertoire titles for a wider or "general" audience. Bardem and De Arano collaborated here for the third time - after an excellent combination of social drama, naturalism, melancholy and poetics in Mondays in the sun from the beginning of this millennium, and not the most successful example of appropriation of Hollywood styles and solutions in a vague realization To love Pablo a few years ago, this duo was in Good boss again on the throne, with full use of the potential of an artistically profiled film to strongly and purposefully step out of its often self-sufficient and then to a large extent narcissistic gable, and offer something that is at the same time drinkable and intelligent and promiscuous. On top of everything else.
