Before the start of the gala the duel was chewed on the red carpet (well, blue). Iron man against Captain America. Batman vs. Superman. ‘As bestas’ against ‘Alcarràs’. The night of the Goyas was presented as a fight in style between the two sides of the rural coin and, behind it, ‘Cinco little wolves’ putting on the face of “However the vote is divided, you’ll see what a laugh”. But in the end there has been no quarter possible: Rodrigo Sorogoyen has annihilated any hope for the rest of the films leaving our Oscar candidate looking at her bagel with absolute sadness and discomfort.
And it is that ‘As bestas’ has been placed at the level of ‘A monster comes to see me’, ‘Pa negre’ and ‘Belle Epoque’ and enters among the ten most awarded of all time with nine big heads which, in a desperate attempt to be sustainable, were made of chocolate. Yeah, They have tried to sell us that it was recycled bronze, but the color does not fool anyone. Let’s review what the (as always) very long Goya gala has given of itself!
Do you know the one that I gave…?
Except for the necessarily dry 2021 Goya edition, where the pandemic was still hitting hard, the gala normally It is a mix between very long and epic speeches, moments that want to go viral and are an absolute failurehumorous comedy that hits one joke out of ten, random tributes and celebrities going up non-stop to give awards that have nothing to do with their area. But that is how we love the Goyas. The three and a half hours of this 2023 have been the opposite: a dry spell in which neither the presenters nor the winners have been able to give the slightest show.
Clara Lago and Antonio de la Torre They have resolved the question “Will they be as good presenters as actors?” giving a clear answer: no. Not at all. The few jokes in the script did not go well and those that did enter were immediately interrupted by demands and slogans, as if to say “We are having a lot of fun, but now let’s talk about mental health.” A very uncomfortable hodgepodge in which they have limited themselves to praising Spanish cinema and all the nominees without daring to let humor cloud the continuous flattery. The mixture of the continuous discomfort of both presenters with a script that has gone to zero risk has resulted in a gala that not even going quickly has managed to gain time.
In a questionable decision, the winners only had one minute to tell their thanks, which has removed the emotionality and given the green light to final sprints naming cousins, brothers, children, pets and team members at a speed that ‘The Flash’ should take note of. The first half of the gala has gone in a hurry, but from then on there has been no way to lift it between musical performances that led nowhere, demands for LGBT cinema (and particularly for ‘La Llamada’, for some reason). , videos about something called “the forest of Spanish cinema” and the award to a Juliette Binoche who was not very clear about what she was doing there. It never became a disaster, it never became a wonder. An aseptic gala. More or less.
Because you are leaving?
It had never happened that the winner of the Goya of Honor died the day before receiving it, and those responsible for the gala began to work on a tribute to his height. And they got it. For half an hour, Manuel Carrasco did his version of ‘Cantares’ along with a bunch of actors reciting the verses of Antonio Machado next to an image of Carlos Saurato which Carmen Maura later paid homage in her own way, before experiencing the most tearful moment of the night.
It is impossible, unless you like movies, not to participate in the crying festival that became the tribute to Saura with the arrival of his children and his wife on stage, to whom they applauded for minutes. After the applause came a (very timely) demand for public health (“she deserves to be taken care of as she takes care of us”) that some people misrepresented in their own way on Twitter. Finally, his widow read the last words that Carlos Saura dedicated to us. “I consider myself a lucky person”, he read, with the tear always pending in his eye. The later version of ‘Por qué te vas’ by Natalia Lafourcade would later be repeated by Juliette Binoche in a more broken way, yes, but also more personal. No one expected the celebration to end in a funeral. But she deserved it.
Sure, after this candid tour de force, How are Antonio de la Torre and Clara Lago going to defend a script that, by itself, does not try to make people laugh? Yes, they made some vague references to the fence of Melilla, veganism, feminism, since the gala should not be political. What they did not expect is that the gala would end with the Iranian Mitra Farahani saying “The fascists must be crushed like cockroaches. The day the fascists are expelled, we will be saved from this hope.” Take climbing.
Luis Fuckin’ Zahera
As for the prizes, there were almost no surprises of any kind (to the glory of my personal pool): it started with Luis “Fuckin” Zahera stating “I always wanted to shoot a western, I always wanted to kill a Frenchman” and ended with ‘As bestas’ taking the award for best film without any emotion. It was to be expected that ‘Alcarràs’, our first Golden Bear in three decades and the film sent by the Academy to compete for the Oscars, would win at least a couple of consolation prizes, but Sorogoyen passed over the chocolate Goyas like a steamroller.
Sound, bam. Photography, bam. Montage, bam. Actor, bam. Director, bam. Of 17 nominations, he took half, nine. ‘Modelo 77’, which has swept the technical categories, has had to settle for five. And precisely the very vindicable ‘Five wolves’ has taken home three of the most important awards (actress, supporting actress and revelation director). It could have been more distributed, but there have been years of success and they are incontestable.
Despite everything, there were small triumphs in the moments for revelations: Laura Galán took the Goya for revelation actress for ‘Cerdita’ in, perhaps, the biggest punk moment of the night, taking his torn and folded speech out of his pocket to vindicate the mental health of children who are bullied (“It’s not your fault, there’s nothing wrong with you and you”) and make a reference to a united love for Terry Gilliam. Is this kind of natural and really excited speech the one that has been missed among a long parade of people who had it well learned.
The other great moment of the night was Best New Actor Awardwhich has been won by Telmo Irureta for ‘The Rite of Spring’, an award that goes beyond his physical condition (it’s a brutal role) and whose speech has culminated in a “We also exist, and we also fuck”. Well of course yes.
“Are we boring you? So the gala must go on”
It gave the impression during the gala that the awards bothered. That they had come here to sing four songs for us, put on some videos, have a celebrity parade (C. Tangana giving the prize for editing included), pat each other on the shoulder and listen to the soporific speech of the president of the Academy, Fernando Méndez-Leite. At least he had the decency to say so right off the bat.
What was surprising was that he did not ask the politicians who were there for anything and said that everything is going well (“This year we did not ask for anything, everything is going well, we are all in union and company and giving each other kisses and hugs. For the protests we will see each other in the offices in a few days”). The only thing he asked, in a touch of humor (I suppose) incomprehensible, was “Let movies be called movies again.” I don’t know what he meant, frankly.
Anyway. The gala, for having, had even nods to Santiago Segura (“That’s making industry”), with a combative intent against no one in particular, listing a series of social problems with no easy solution or common enemy. The result, a gibberish of demands that did not finish permeating beyond the need to save public health.
Despite everything, there have been moments that stood out from the usual plain: the director of the best short film telling his daughter that Taking it to the movies “was the best way I had to convey my infinite love to you”the stellar appearance of Fernando Esteso getting emotional (“These awards are the repera”) and remembering Agustí Villaronga and Carlos Saura, the vindication of the short filmmakers (“The short is cinema”), Leiva receiving the award from Joaquín Sabina without taking off his hat or an In Memoriam in which, one more year, the applause meter could not be avoided. And, finally, Laia Costa’s reflection on ‘Cinco lobitos’ and how people call their loved ones. Frankly, as a result of the Goya, I hope many more people recover it.
The Goyas of the future
The 2023 gala promised to be the renewal of a Spanish cinema always of quality, but also trapped in the same five actors and directors. And in the end it has been achieved, yes, but only partially. The new names have flown over the seats (Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, Carlota Pereda, Laura Galán…) but the most important awards have once again been won by Rodrigo Sorogoyenleaving Carla Simón without an award for the second time after ‘Summer, 1993’.
But there is renewal in Spanish cinema, whether the Goyas want it or not. Today’s gala sows those of the future, and the names that always fall (Luis Tosar, Penélope Cruz, Javier Gutiérrez, Javier Bardem, Rodrigo Sorogoyen) will have to end up giving way, yes or yes, to a new talent that is stomping and he is not willing to step aside. ‘As bestas’ has won fairly, yes, but the awards could (perhaps should) have been more distributed in a year in which a fantastic movie like ‘Manticore’ has walked away with zero awards and ‘Pacifiction’ was only heard as a minor rebuke near the end of the gala. Sorogoyen deserved it. Yes of course. But.
Perhaps it is time for a general renovation also in the gala itself, which in its elegant and sober staging serves the same for a Goya gala as for a Spanish wine gala, a presentation of the new Nintendo console or a TED talk. ANDhe Spanish cinema cannot afford to be this bland, self-conscious, serious and boring at such a beastly moment of change (forgive the redundancy). New scriptwriters, presenters at the height, risk, punk attitude. It cannot be that the funniest and most notorious of the entire gala, awards aside, was that a girl came across Clara Lago in the middle of her presentation. Just like at the Oscars, she has to put her head down and think again from scratch.