[Patty-Lynne Herlevi is a Seattle film-festival reviewer. She interviews José Luis Cuerda, director of the film Butterfly, which won the Goya Award for Best Screenplay (2000). That's a Spanish Oscar.]
" I had the great pleasure of interviewing Jose Luis Cuerda, the director and producer of The Butterfly, while he was in Seattle promoting his film at the Seattle International Film Festival. We discussed everything from casting to what it was like for the director to grow up during the Franco era. Like the film itself, the time spent with him was an education I’ll never forgot. "
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Patty-Lynne Herlevi: What attracted you to the screenplay about the Spanish Civil War?
Jose Luis Cuerda: I didn’t choose it because it was about the Civil War. I chose it because it was a story about a child learning about life that’s disrupted by a traumatic environment which is war, which is the disruption of a life. I am especially interested in the moral question about how the exercise of violence causes people to lose their dignity.
Patty-Lynne Herlevi: How were you affected as an artist and as a person growing up during Franco’s reign?
Jose Luis Cuerda: As a person or an artist it was a very negative experience. It was a regime in which you couldn’t express your opinion. You couldn’t even buy books or see films that you would like to see because of censorship. And with regards to making films or expressing yourself in any kind of literary way, you had to deal with the censors. But at first, imperceptibly, the censors began to back off a bit, and it became easier to say what one wanted to say as long as it wasn’t directly political against the regime.
Patty-Lynne Herlevi: What role did the Catholic church play in all of this and could you be censored for speaking out against the church?
Jose Luis Cuerda: You could take advantage of criticizing the Catholic church in certain ways because paradoxically there was a certain sector of the church, a more progressive sector, that also was critical of the politics. And so the censors, to get back at the church, allowed some criticism of it.
Patty-Lynne Herlevi: Why was Luis Buñuel’s film Viridiana censored by the Catholic church and the Franco government?
Jose Luis Cuerda: Buñuel was able to make two films that were censored, Tristana and Viridiana, where at the end the protagonist was supposed to spend the night with her cousin. The censors wouldn’t allow it, so instead they allowed her to spend the night playing cards with her cousin -- which Bunuel liked much better.
Patty-Lynne Herlevi: Buñuel’s characters always seem to play cards in his films.
Jose Luis Cuerda: Yes.
Patty-Lynne Herlevi: Would you agree that the axis around which The Butterfly revolves is human frailty, fear?
Jose Luis Cuerda: It’s about a child who learns positive and negative things about life. He learns about the ideal of platonic love and about physical love. He learns about dignity and cowardice, friendship and betrayal. And how all of this reduces to life, and how war disrupts life and destroys truth and installs life in its place.
Patty-Lynne Herlevi: The child was so young when this happened.
Jose Luis Cuerda: Yes. That’s why he’s so vulnerable, so easily affected by what older people tell him, particularly his mother. But I do think he realizes he has done something bad, and that what lies ahead of him is a pretty unhappy life.
Patty-Lynne Herlevi: I thought that the older brother’s transformation was presented in a more positive light than that of his younger brother. Even though he loses the girl that he loves, he still learns about romantic love and the passion of music.
Jose Luis Cuerda: What happens is that every positive thing the older brother finds he loses: the other older person takes the girl away and in the end he, too, yells. He’s yelling but stops when he sees his friend, the accordion player, coming out. In the end the entire family is marked, which in that town means marked forever. Everyone knows who they are, and that they will be known as traitors - Republicans who switched sides to save themselves.
Patty-Lynne Herlevi: So were they seen as weak for changing sides?
Jose Luis Cuerda: But what do you when they put a gun to your head?
Patty-Lynne Herlevi: I can’t answer that because I’ve never been in that situation. Perhaps I would defend myself or run away. So does hatred win over love?
Jose Luis Cuerda: In some cases, yes, and in some cases, no, but it’s not so much about the triumph of ideas or feelings. It’s about people’s lives. People are not purely feelings or ideas, but they’re a mixture of many things. But I believe that the instinct to survive and to continue living is perhaps our most powerful instinct. In fact everywhere in the world the highest courts grant us the right to defend ourselves and often times they allow for the possibility that one can overcome fear, which at least explains if not justifies cowardly action. I think that Butterfly addresses these complex responses.
Patty-Lynne Herlevi: How has the film been received in Spain and did the youth of Spain respond to the politics?
Jose Luis Cuerda: When politics is exercised to the point where it destroys people’s dignity, everyone is affected. That is why Butterfly was one of the 3 most recognized films of the year in Spain. Both young and old have attended it film; and many young people have stopped me in the street to congratulate me.
Patty-Lynne Herlevi: What was it like directing the young children in the film? Was it a difficult experience, a challenging one?
Jose Luis Cuerda: Directing the protagonist was very easy. It was much more difficult tearing him away from the games he was constantly playing than directing him. Directing the girl (who plays Moncho’s love interest) was very difficult. She was very nice and very pleasant. She would always say yes and promise to do it exactly the way I told her then she would never do it. She will be a woman with a strong character and someone to be feared.
And the boy didn’t like her. He thought that she was really ugly. He actually told her that. He said to her, "I think you’re really ugly and I don’t want to be your boyfriend."
Patty-Lynne Herlevi: Well, he’s a convincing actor.
Jose Luis Cuerda: Maybe that’s why the little girl always acted so badly.
Patty-Lynne Herlevi: Gracias for the interview.
THE END