/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/larazon/RNVMYBFQLBGIRPTXXCJ5FPXLWA.JPG?fit=%2C&ssl=1 "feminist memoirs of anti-communist propaganda")
Sometimes as elements of explicit political propaganda, sometimes as simple exploitations of the ideological sign of the moment or war justification of idem, the truth is that the “thrillers” that rely on the Cold War to tell stories about free will and sovereignty Popular as an unbreakable -and tortuous- design they have been among us, approximately, since the end of a conflict that always saw its most serious fear in the nuclear. From the communist muscles of Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Danko: the color red”, to the bombastic subtlety of Sean Connery in “The Hunt for Red October”, passing through more recent episodes such as the excellent “Red Dawn” or “The Bridge of Spies. By Steven Spielberg, Hollywood has always taken refuge in the decline of the Soviet Union to exalt the values of its very poor democracy. It is not surprising then that Disney, through Venn’s diagram of the adrenaline rush that has turned the adaptations of Marvel comics, took little time to offer us its own and epic version of the tale: in “Black widow”, which opens this week in theaters and on Disney + and stars Scarlett Johansson, David Harbor, Florence Pugh and Rachel Weisz, we go back to the origin of the first avenger we met on the big screen to tie up certain dots about her childhood and, incidentally, to settle any type of ambiguity regarding the reactionary ideological bias of the superhero saga.
Ode to sisterhood
A few years ago, in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” (2014), the house of ideas already tried transfer the drives of the static conflict to their own universe, but the good hand of Anthony and Joe Russo – which later earned them the direction of “Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame” – prevented the show from serving as a justification for the horrendous and the action, more focused on the conjunctural that ideologically, it seemed focused on telling a story about assured mutual destruction, yes, but through the friendship of two men and not thanks to nuclear codes. In “Black Widow”, director Cate Shortland (Australia, 1968) uses the broad brush to immerse himself in a world that was quite alien to him: “I knew about the universe of Marvel movies in the cinema, but I was not a fan until the project came to me. I started watching “Thor: Ragnarok” and “Black Panther”, which I really liked, and then I went backwards until I found Captain America movies, closer to what we wanted to tell”, He explains through videoconference to LA RAZÓN.
That story, which takes us back to the nineties to the rhythm of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in a decaffeinated version, tells us how Natasha and Yelena (Johansson and Pugh), two sisters from deep Ohio, see their childhood interrupted by their escape of their parents, two Russian spies infiltrated in the United States who ignore them once safely and let them fall into the hands of the Red Room, a kind of secret Soviet CIA that turns orphan girls into super-soldier women to fight for the communist cause … And what arises. Shortland, who had already gone down in the mud in “Lore” (2012), about the brainwashing of the Nazi regime, avoids with tables the question about the obvious ideological load of his film: “Beyond politics, I wanted the film to be overwhelming, that people joined us on a roller coaster of emotions to have a good time. And also that he had those little moments of truth, about the family, its dynamics and how it affects the passage of time. This is how this movie came out, which I think It is a story as epic as it is intimate ”, he avoids.
Controversy aside, the truth is that his “Black Widow”, more interpretive and choral than merely handmade, can also be understood as an ode to sisterhood in the most intimate sense of the word. It is not so much about saving all those women who fall into the nets of the bad guy on duty, but also about building the Natasha Romanov who years later would save the world with the Hulk and Ironman like an older sister in search of her own humanity, the memory of a past that he knows will never be able to return through the salvation of his sister, the last link with the innocence that was taken from him.
In fiction, that nostalgic role of reminder falls on her little sister, Florence Pugh, and her “father”, that David Harbor we’ve learned to love through her roles in “Stranger Things”, “Hellboy” or “The Newsroom” and sharing with the protagonist of “Midsommar” the best scenes of the film: “I hardly knew the work of Florence (Pugh), and I actually saw “Little Women” when we were already shooting. This allowed me not to treat her with distance or with the same delicacy as any other colleague. We ended up sticking our fingers up each other’s noses during filming and goofing around together. I think that in the movie you can see it and it’s wonderful. We were allowed to create a wonderful relationship without the clichés and clichés that are sometimes assumed between stars. We were just a couple of actors trying to create chemistry and it worked. I cannot be more proud, because she was also willing to give her best. In fact, when we sing Don McLean’s “American Pie” in unison in the movie, it’s something that came about out of our efforts to create our own. With any other actress, I don’t think it would have been so easy, “explains the actor before joking about his” typecasting “in the cinema as a survivor of the red terror, this being his third role under the same prism:” It’s a very crazy coincidence and very funny. I think I have already learned to escape from any Soviet jail ”.
Chascarrillos aside, the truth is that the return of “Black Widow” and the Marvel Cinematic Universe to the big screen, beyond the lukewarm television products that have turned out to be “Loki” or “Wandavision”, lays the first stone of the future of a franchise that will now be measured in terms of diversity. This attempt, in feminine, will be accompanied in September by another in Asian key (“Shang-Chi and the legend of the ten rings”) and in November by another perhaps more risky, the “Eternals” of a Chloé Zhao who has promised bring together Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek and Kit Harington in its infinite horizons as deities of the Marvelite genesis. So the future, and if we forgive the propaganda, “Black Widow” comes to our billboards with a metaphilic mission more complicated than any that I have ever carried out in the cinema: save the theaters from the hand of Dominic Toretto and his “Fast and Furious 9” and safeguard them as a place to enjoy what both films are in contention, “blockbusters” as enjoyable as forgettable that will delight the spectator who seeks refuge in the Soviet cold of the armchair.
The “geek” behind the Red Guardian
Account David Harbour that when the script for “Black Widow” arrived at his house, so did a framed copy of the first issue of the comic in which his character, the Red Guardian, appeared. The communist revision of Captain America debuted in a comic of “The Avengers”, but the truth is that the actor was never comics: “I grew more with video games and board games. “Dragons and dungeons”, for example, or fantasy books. I was always a bit weird, a bit geek in that regard. As a child I was never interested in comicsBut when “Ironman” came out in theaters it changed my whole perspective on the potential of their stories. They turned comic book characters into something more like Indiana Jones in terms of myth and symbolism. They made them cool again ”, he concludes.
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