Ricardo Darín: "I don't even think about retiring"

They did the same old thing.

They bundled up, they put on their boots, they put on their skis.

And they headed for the slopes.

However, when Ricardo Darín approached to pay the pass for the "elevation means", he discovered that something had changed.

It wasn't him, it was the system: they gave him a 50% discount.

It is what he has to turn 65 years old.

The actor says that, since then, his wife, Florencia Bas, does nothing but play jokes on him about the matter.

But he has no intention of paying attention to the cashier.

“I don't even think about retiring.

He hasn't crossed my mind.

I like to work.

When I don't, I'm also a mess.

In three days I am able to abandon myself, I love doing nothing.

Work organizes me, sets up an agenda for me”, he recounted in an interview with EL PAÍS during his stay at the Venice festival, almost a month ago.

And there he was precisely because of his last professional commitment: the premiere of

, by Santiago Mitre, the first time that Argentine cinema recounts in depth the Juicio de las Juntas, the trial of the nine soldiers who led the implacable dictatorship between 1976 and 1983. The film arrived in Spanish theaters last Friday, before its premiere on Amazon Prime Video on October 21.

More information

Criticism of 'Argentina, 1985': the common man who saved democracy

Even before the interview begins, the actor himself laughs at his alleged decrepitude.

It may be the half-dried plant next to him, or his innate humor, but it is compared to a "theme wake" (that strange tendency of some funeral homes to leave a deceased embalmed, so that the family can still make him

in some activity) .

Nothing is further from reality: Darín's star does not stop shining.

The boy who debuted at a very young age, the former gallant of televised soap operas, is today one of the most applauded actors in the world.

Since

, by Fabián Bielinsky (in the year 2000), he relentlessly accumulates leading roles and awards.

His appeal even transcends the cinema: in

the Argentine group Los Piojos sang: “I have the eyes of Darín”.

At this point, the specialized website Imdb calculates that the actor has a hundred roles between the big and small screen.

And that is missing those that he has interpreted in theater.

But Darín explains that

it seemed “important” from the first reading.

“The story had the smell of something that was not going to go unnoticed.

Afterwards, it depended on the level of realization and interpretation that we achieved, that we could tell it how we wanted, obtain the music that we dreamed of... Although I always trusted the script a lot, we had to be very beasts to destroy it, ”he argues.

They have not, at least judging by the applause in Venice, or by the fact that the film has been chosen as the Argentine representative for the Oscars.

And that the film was a great challenge for the cinema of his country.

And, somehow, also for Darín.

Ricardo Darín, as Julio César Strassera, and Peter Lanzani, on the left, as Luis Moreno Ocampo, at a moment in 'Argentina, 1985'.

Because, to get into the skin of Julio César Strassera, the prosecutor who led the accusation in the macro-trial, the actor broke one of his customs: he does not usually embody real characters.

He says that from the beginning the relationship of the man, now deceased, with his son impacted him in the script.

And since he doesn't have a set method to prepare his papers, he focused on trying to understand him.

“During a break from filming, I went to the

and arranged for a big wedding.

He tells me: 'I was a very good friend of Strassera.

You don't look alike at all, but you're the same, ”he told

Here is an official who has spent his entire life in justice, convinced that "he has not achieved much," according to Darín, who suddenly receives the call of history.

"Guys like me don't do it," he defends himself at the beginning of the film.

He ends up assuming, however, the mission of rebuilding a barbarism made of kidnappings, systematic torture and more than 30,000 disappeared.

At the trial, Strassera himself defined it as “the greatest genocide” that his country had ever known.

And, towards the end of the footage, he takes the stage for his very famous closing speech.

The one that ends as all of Argentina knows: “Never again”.

“We always took special care not to load inks.

What we like most about this story is the humanity that is breathed, the contradictions and fears of each character, beyond political positions.

It is very easy to scratch and find controversy, that is why we put the focus on justice, truth, memory, away from all kinds of partisanship, "says the interpreter.

Inevitable, yes, that each one relived their own experience of those years.

Darín was little more than a teenager.

He had dropped out of high school, participated in a student revolutionary movement and, despite his youth, he was already almost a “veteran” of acting.

He assures that the young people then lived in "a certain nebula".

However, he adds: “That dictatorship was so bloody and insane that it has almost covered up the others.

But I experienced a previous one where if you had a mustache or long hair you were an extremist.

Although, next to the one that came later, it was childish.

In the two years before 1976, I felt fear, it was clear that something strange was going to happen.

And when Videla's blow came, he would almost say that he was not so surprised.

That was the insanity of the situation.

I think it was a product of the amount of democratic interruptions that we had.

I always believed that we needed to exercise democracy to see what it is like.

There is a lot of pain, many deaths, wounds that are difficult to cauterize”.

Prosecutors Julio César Strassera (right) and Luis Moreno Campo (by his side), during the trial, in Buenos Aires in 1985.STR (AFP)

So much so that, as the actor recalls and the film shows, the Trial of the Boards began surrounded by a certain skepticism.

Just a year and a half later, how was the fragile government of Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín going to promote a process against the military?

However, it happened.

And five of the nine were convicted.

There was relief, euphoria.

Although also angry for the four acquittals.

To the pressure of telling all that in a film, another was added: it was the first film they shot after the outbreak of the pandemic.

From the strictest confinement to sequences with "350 or 400 extras, in the real courtroom."

“We were naturally concerned.

Now we forget, but what we did was titanic.

Like climbing Everest”, says Darín.

If

reached the Oscars, moreover, the actor's legend would update his record: it would be the fourth time that a film where he works opts for the statuettes (

and

by Juan José Campanella, and

, by Damián Szifrón).

No interpreter from his country has come this far.

But Darín wants to continue.

With his performances.

And with the production company Kenya, which he shares with his son Chino and with Federico Posternak.

He confesses that he gets excited every time he finishes a shocking book and starts thinking about how to adapt it.

And that he continues to hunt for good stories, rather than specific roles: "I have no personal ambitions regarding any character."

The balance of these 65 years, then, is more than positive: "If there is one person in this world who cannot complain about anything, that is me."

In addition, for months, even skiing for half the price.

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