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THE BASTARD
Juan-Rodriguez- Briso has written an epic script, and I’m well aware that Eduardo Soto-Falcon has done very committed and intense test movies of this project and both artists have put, obviously, a great deal of work and talent into this project. So, as this is a Spanish subject with such talented Spanish input, and I’m British, I approach it with humility as an outsider.

First thing: because the script is perhaps in a foreign tongue, English, or at least second language, its level of communication is incredible. I learned a lot about a story that, from school, I mostly learnt from the other side. It was fascinating to see these gigantic characters as humans. If only we could have had the Duke of Medina Sidonia and the Armada as well – and why not? After all, it’s only CGI.

Some of the grammar is a bit difficult, or at least eccentric, to follow though. Personally I loved the scene where John makes love with Diana ‘over the deck’ instead of on it, a whole new visual image. But this is a quibble.

It is a story whose scope and scale reminded me of El Cid, with Charlton Heston playing John and Sophia Loren as Diana.Yet, to me, there was something lacking. Not big battle scenes – plenty of those, and great-looking.

The palaces were great too, and the background information about Philip’s Reliquary very interesting. It would be so good as backdrop in an epic film.

And yet ... I feel something was lacking. Perhaps it is the sheer weight of nobility, vast strategies, great events. I longed for the human touch. John has Diana, but that’s not enough. They and the whole story, in my personal view, need a low counterpoint, or else the enterprise becomes a great juggernaut without emotional purpose. After all, many of John’s and others’ utterances are rather Zen and alienating rather than drawing us in.

What I found myself longing for was a Common Man (or Woman) to give us the view of ordinary people as a counterpoint – perhaps somewhat like the Common Man in Robert Bolt’s “A Man For All Seasons” about Henry VIII, a King well versed in power and grand strategies. I longed for a “Common Man” to inform, involve and entertain (and amuse) us in the same way in “The Bastard”.

One of your characters is Cervantes and it seemed to me that here you missed a big opportunity to make a popular commercial and engagingly emotional and accessible mass-entertainment of this epic movie. After all, Don Quixote’s sidekick was the quintessential Common Man, Sancho Panza. And he is the man this movie should have.