Alejandro González Iñárritu: ‘The criminals are those who create banks, not those who rob them’

Around 200 miles of celluloid languished in the basement of the Autonomous University of Mexico’s film archive. These were the bits edited out of Amores perros, the film that changed the life of Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, 62, an advertising director and radio announcer at that time. It also changed the direction of Mexican cinema, which has become a worldwide phenomenon. It is now 25 years since the movie’s premiere. From that discarded material comes Sueño Perro, an artistic installation which opened September 18 at the Prada Foundation in Milan. From October 5 it can also be seen at LagoAlgo, a cultural center in Mexico City.

The result is a labyrinth of dark rooms where old projectors spit out discarded sequences, with the rough and seductive grain of 35 millimeters. Beams of light flash through the exhibition, inviting the visitor to enter the film, as happened in The Purple Rose of Cairo, only this time we are beckoned into the turbulent Mexico of the end of the last century. There are dog fights, blood-red streets, the impossible return of a father who abandoned his daughter, the fading beauty of a sick model, the silence on the still beardless face of Gael García Bernal. And a car accident that pulls it all together.

The project started out as Amor y rabia (Love and Rage), but one morning the director, who receives EL PAÍS smiling and tanned, woke up with the perfect title in his head. In Milan, the Prada Foundation is also hosting a second photographic exhibition designed by Juan Villoro, which evokes the pulse of the city where the film was born, a metropolis of 18 million inhabitants and three million dogs.

Question. You link Amores Perros to the work of Mexican muralists such as Siqueiros and Orozco. Did your film want to be, like those paintings of the interwar period, a great social fresco?

Answer. Yes, there was always that part. In Mexico, at that time, only seven films were made a year. You knew that your first movie could be your last, so you put all your meat on the grill. I thought of this film as an X-ray of my interior, but also of my country.

Q. Did you want to reflect the violence around you?

A. It was a very hard time, even harder than now. My father was kidnapped. They broke my mum’s mouth. Everyone was robbed. On Mondays, at the coffee machine, we would go over who had suffered what over the weekend: one was robbed at gunpoint, the other’s sister was murdered in a taxi, and her body was never found. There was a tremendous sense of vulnerability. I wanted to talk about the complexity of a rat city like Mexico, the most beautiful and horrible place in the world. It’s the Rome of the Americas: beautiful, but you always wonder how something like this could exist.

Q. The installation is also a tribute to cinema shot on celluloid, an art form that will not return.

A. The film I shot Amores perros with is no longer manufactured. At the time, I was very influenced by Nan Goldin’s photography. I wanted to rescue moments of beauty. Compared to digital, to all those anti-human inventions that obsess us, such as AI, these images exude beauty, because they are real. Twenty-year-olds have never seen this magic. We are the last dinosaurs, and I find it sad.

Q. The disordered structure of Amores perros, which was a trend at that time, is also striking. Now intersecting stories have almost disappeared from cinema. Why?

A. In my case it comes from my father, who always started the stories at the end and then got lost in endless details, to my mother’s despair. Perhaps it has disappeared because today, with the arrival of platforms, instead of telling something in two hours, it stretches over 10 chapters. There is no longer a need to compress complexity. This has led to simplification. Complex structures demand precision: dramatic hooks, clarity, justification. If not, they become pretentious. And here’s another theory: perhaps the audience no longer wants to give so much attention to a film.

Q. What are your memories of getting a project like this off the ground in Mexico at the end of the 1990s? For example, the public subsidy was denied and there were actors who preferred not to do participate.

A. Making films is like pushing a cart uphill: a constant battle that you never quite master. It is permanent friction, a struggle of ideas that also involves a lot of money and a lot of technique. I found it was like that then and I still find it today. For Birdman, for example, it took me two years to get the financing and I didn’t get a salary. With Amores perros, I was lucky enough to have an independent producer believe in me and provide $2 million. Even so, my partner and I ended up putting our own money into it. But there was an electricity in the air: we knew we were doing something that mattered to us. The political context also played a role. It was a moment of change and hope [due to the victory of Vicente Fox, the first president who did not belong to the PRI since 1929], who over time proved to be a bit naïve.

Q. In the text in the catalogue, you pay tribute to the fundamental role of screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who you distanced yourself from after Babel.

A. I have always recognized his role was important and given him credit. The three films we made together, Amores perros, 21 Grams and Babel, were an extraordinary time. Creatively we formed an incredible team. But, as in any rock group, there comes a time when going your own way is healthy.

Q. “Iñárritu stole my world,” Arriaga has said. You say now that this universe you created arose from the experiences and sensibility of both.

A. Of course, it was a crossover. Cinema is a confluence of energies, those of the director, the screenwriter, the actors... When it works, it’s a miracle. The ultimate responsibility is always mine: I decide whether the sweater will be green or blue. That’s why every mistake in my films is my responsibility, but the achievements belong to everyone. It is a complicated art, because it requires absolute harmony. And that does not always happen.

Q. After winning two consecutive Oscars as a director, did your priorities change? What relationship have you had with success?

A. They say that success is harder to handle than failure, and I agree. Failure gives you perspective, resilience, humility. Success, on the other hand, is flattering and toxic — it intoxicates you. My father used to say, “Success, have a sip of it, gargle and spit it out.” I’ve tried to follow that advice. He had a hard life: he inherited, he succeeded, then he lost everything and he ended up distributing fruits and vegetables. He was annoyed by people who talked about themselves in the third person. For example, Hugo Sánchez, the footballer. Of course, success affects you: there are gazes and expectations, both those of others and your own. But I always tried to see success and failure as two imposters. When I arrived in Hollywood and they told me “You’re a genius,” it made me uncomfortable. I swear to you: it went in one ear and out the other. I know who I am and I am very aware of my limitations.

Q. Does your latest film, Bardo, arise from a need to slow down, to return to something more intimate and personal?

A. Yes, to slow down. When I turned 60, I felt the need to put my life in perspective: my questions, my relationships, what I do, my children, my nationality. Bardo is above all a film about immigration and loss. I started working on it after Birdman, which is when I started meditating. I wanted to express intimate things, to look for the meaning in what I do and to share the difficulty of having lost our son — something that deeply marked my wife, María Eladia and myself — as well as having left a country and all that that implied for my children and my parents. It was a necessary project, which satisfied my soul. Although it couldn’t be more different from Amores perros.

Q. There is a point of connection between the two: the dedication to your son Luciano, who died at two weeks of age. That loss runs through all your films.

A. I filmed Amores perros at a time of great suffering. After the premiere, suddenly everything changed and we went [to the United States], leaving many things unfinished. Bardo was born from the need to tell myself: “Let’s see, you’ve been crazy for 20 years. Ask yourself who you are.” We are all someone’s children. And when we have children, they become our reflection. That relationship with its ups and downs is vital: it defines how you understand your life, beyond the professional and the political. It is an infinite, enriching and devastating exploration. It’s a subject that obsesses me.

Q. Denis Villeneuve says that you approach each film as if your life depended on it. You have described yourself as an obsessive perfectionist director. Where does this ferocious demand on yourself come from?

A. Perhaps from being the youngest of five siblings. I wasn’t spoiled. On the contrary, I always had the worst deal. And that’s where the fear of failing came from, of being repressed. I became anxious about making sure things went smoothly. And then there’s my superego, that inner voice that doesn’t stop judging you. It used to talk to me badly, but over time I have learned to correct it. We all have a Torquemada inside: that inquisitive bastard always ready to make your life bitter.

Q. Amores perros also portrays the animalization of society. Have we become dogs?

A. We domesticated wolves and made them faithful, honest, and loving. We, on the other hand, have become the wolves. The great danger today is collective madness. Sometimes I feel like I’m constantly in a rock stadium or at a football game, with everyone screaming. We inhabit a world of individual truths, but we no longer see reality. Our relationship with the world goes through thoughts, words and labels. We have broken the connection to our bodies. That’s what’s really wild.

Q. The social violence you described in Mexico 25 years ago has not disappeared.

A. On the contrary, it has intensified. The cartels took over the governments: not only cartels controlling weapons and drugs, but also sectors like real estate, pharmaceutical, technological... To be able to drive a car you take an exam. To run a company, you go through dozens of interviews. But to be president you don’t need to prove anything: you can be an ignorant psychopath and no one questions it. If you’re popular, that’s enough. Robbing a bank is nothing compared to creating one: the real criminals are the ones who create them. And that is already a global phenomenon.

Q. Can you tell us something about your next project, a comedy with Tom Cruise?

A. It was difficult, but I just finished it. It was long and complicated for many reasons. I worked with extraordinary actors, from Tom Cruise to Sandra Hüller. It’s very different from anything I’ve done. Tom was incredible: dedication, precision, passion, overwhelming positivity and a great ability to laugh at himself. It’s a wild, funny, catastrophic comedy. I think Tom is going to surprise: he reveals himself as a histrionic, character-driven actor, one that was sometimes overshadowed by his status as an absolute master of action cinema, which he knows how to do with admirable integrity. It was a very beautiful relationship of mutual trust.

Q. And are you going to surprise as a director?

A. I composed the music, but he will play the piano solo. I edited the film at the same time as setting up this installation: so it’s my beginnings versus my latest work. I no longer recognize myself in who I was 25 years ago; today my interests are different. I look at this and ask myself, “Where did I get so much fucking energy?” But I would say that’s what keeps me alive — the curiosity to do what I don’t know how to do yet. When I know how to do something, I get bored. What excites me is learning.

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