Santa’s first vocal interjection is signalled by his standing up, which is necessary because he is seeking to involve Lino in Reina’s criticism, and Lino is sitting behind Santa; in order to look at Lino, Santa either needs to swivel the chair around or stand and turn. The camera subtly moves with Bardem as he stands (it does the same with Reina as he moves later in the sequence but it feels even less pronounced then), keeping him slightly left of centre but with the bar top no longer in frame. Bardem arches his back, one of his methods of emphasising Santa’s weight, drawing attention to his paunch but also by natural corollary (his shoulders are also back) puffing out his chest – the alpha male in the room has just stood up. Juan Marsé describes Santa as ‘un parado que sobrevive entre la rebeldía interna y la desilusión, como un gorila entre las rajas del deprimente zoológico’ [‘An unemployed man who survives between internal rebellion and disillusion, like a gorilla between the bars of a depressing zoo’] (2004: 35), and there is something animalistic about the potential threat he manifests through his sheer bulk. He doesn’t fully face Reina at this point, looking at him sideways on with his head now tilted in a manner that could be taken as a challenge, but Bardem keeps his voice at normal volume with a neutral tone – that Santa is a threat to Reina in any way is only conveyed via his body language.

When Reina uses Rico as a positive example of what the men could have done after they lost their jobs, José starts to be intercut into the sequence on his own although he never moves from his seated position at the bar and continues to be shown in shot with Santa as well. I think his being shown alone is partly to show another fracture within the group but also to suggest his potential isolation. It is significant, given that he usually sits along the length of the bar where Santa and Reina currently are, that he is instead sitting alongside Amador’s (Celso Bugallo) empty seat; Amador serves as a warning as to where José might end up if Ana (Nieve de Medina – not present) leaves him. José’s scepticism as to the likelihood of everyone managing to do as well as Rico leads to Reina’s assertion “Not if you work hard”, which harks back to the bedtime story scene and by extension leads to an audience expectation as to Santa’s reaction. On cue, on that line, the camera cuts to Santa.

Bardem fills the left hand side of the frame, standing, leaning backwards, head tilted in a way that – in combination with his gaze – suggests that Santa is assessing Reina. When Reina mentions Amador, Bardem expels air through his nose in a snort that is somewhere between derision and disgust, and he looks away from Reina and down at the ground. Cut to Reina. Then cut back to Santa as he starts to speak. Bardem is now in medium close-up (head and shoulders) in three-quarter profile. His tone is no longer neutral and he is tilting his head down, so that he is looking up, giving emphasis to both his words and his eyes. As Santa starts to warm to his theme, Bardem shifts his weight between feet and changes his stance so that he is temporarily facing Reina straight on, in the centre of the frame. He stays centre frame when he turns his body back to the bar and keeps his head turned towards Reina / the camera as he speaks. However, as Santa begins to get angry, Bardem’s stance changes again and he leans with one elbow on the bar so that he turns away from Reina, with his back / the back of his head to the camera. Santa is trying to hide his emotions but it seems a brave decision by Bardem to hide his face; we feel the anger in the tightness of the angle of his neck and the stiffness of his shoulders rather than from a facial expression. When Santa turns back, he has both arms on the bar and is leaning diagonally into the frame, occupying most of the screen (again, emphasising Bardem’s size but arguably also the character’s centrality to the construction of the sequence – everyone else acts in reaction to him).

Cut to a reaction shot of Lino, which I think serves to emphasise Santa’s emotion at this point and how it has the potential to unsettle the other men. Throughout the film, Santa reveals himself to be astutely aware of the personal dangers faced by his friends and their currently precarious sense of self-identity (engendered by their lack of employment – as León de Aranoa puts it, ‘el trabajo es su capital, su única posesión, su bien más preciado; si se lo quitan, les quitan todo’ [‘Work is their capital, their only possession, their most valued asset; if it is taken away, everything is taken’] (Ponga, et al 2002: 158)), but he presents himself as the bluff pillar of the group; his showing emotion reveals that he is not unscathed by their common experience, and that seems to unnerve Lino. It’s noticeable during this part of the sequence that in each of the reaction shots, the other men are either looking down or away from Santa – lost in their own thoughts, but also finding it difficult to look at him given what he is talking about and how he is talking about it. Cut back to Santa – now upright and standing again – who starts to point and tap the bar for emphasis.

Up until now, Bardem’s gestures had been quite contained and had more to do with posture, but as Santa’s emotions come to the surface they become more expansive and his hands and arms more frequently come into frame. Still shot sideways on at the bar, when he now turns to Reina with his head tilted forward, eyes up, you get the sense of both Santa’s need to push and Bardem’s restraint. Cut back to Reina as he asks what the strikers achieved, and then back to Santa as Reina answers his own question with “Nothing”. Santa is facing the bar, head bowed, he turns as he says “Estabamos juntos” [“We were united”] with force and Bardem shifts his weight forward as if Santa is going to start moving in Reina’s direction. Reina looks away.

Cut to a shot of Rico, this time with Nata (Aida Folch) visible behind him (the first time we realise that she is present – the scene so far has been blocked in such a way as to hide her presence, despite her being in view of all of the men). But as Santa starts to talk about what went wrong with the strike, Bardem turns his back to the camera again (hiding emotion again, but this time a mixture of anger and sadness – indicated via tone of voice as well as his avoidance of eye contact).

Santa’s attitude towards Rico (Bardem tilts his head back, listening, his chin up but not in a challenge), as the bar owner justifies his actions during the strike, lacks the hostility he shows Reina, and he concedes the point about men who had families to take care of, again leaning forward and tapping the bar for emphasis. In response to Rico’s “There wasn’t anything else”, he gives an eloquent shrug, smiles with a nod, and says “Cojonudo” [“Brilliant”] twice (the second time half muttered), turning so that he is centre frame. He looks left so that his body is facing forward but his head is in three quarter profile, and then he turns back to the bar, his head bowed; it gives the impression that Santa knows this argument is going nowhere (it has effectively already been lost – what they’re arguing about happened three years earlier) but he can’t walk away from it and is therefore tethered to these people and a need for someone to acknowledge that what happened wasn’t right (hence his moving about on the same spot).

At this point Nata starts to be intercut into the individual reactions (now the sixth angle within the set-up – and the closest to being Santa’s POV), the first lone shot of her coinciding with a heavy sigh from Santa. That her individual reactions begin at a point when Santa’s words form the audio – rather than Rico’s (her father) – and that they physically occupy the same space within the frame (as shown above), speaks to the connection between the two of them (she is the only character capable of leaving him lost for words), but arguably also re-enforces Santa’s association with children; he is repeatedly shown interacting with them – the children of the two women we see him flirting with and the boy he babysits – and he is the only male character who does so. At this point, as Bardem shifts his weight again, Santa seems more weary and sad, although his pointing towards Amador’s empty chair (seen almost from Santa’s own POV) has an emphatic flourish, and he then starts to pick up speed again. [The manner in which Amador preys on Santa’s mind is revealed a couple of scenes later, when rather than leaving to meet a woman – as José presumes – Santa instead goes to check on the older man at home (and discovers his body)]

When he talks about ‘the agreement’ that divided the strikers he taps the bar with more force and his tone becomes more aggressive. Bardem now hunches his back forward, which makes him appear smaller (a physical representation of a sense of defeat), once more leaning into the frame towards Rico to emphasise what he’s saying (and also talking much faster). “We weren’t united anymore. They’d divided us.”  He turns away again and looks down at the ground rather than directly at any of them; his tone of voice and stance here (looking down, more contained) speaks of disappointment, some residual anger, but mainly sadness, and it reveals more clearly that the group is still divided because of what happened three years earlier. At the end of his explanations as to how they each ended up in the positions they are now in, he looks directly at Reina, head back and chin up, defiant and issuing a clear challenge. The look in Bardem’s eyes when (in response) Reina argues that the shipyard wasn’t competitive enough and that he’d go to a different bar if the drinks were cheaper elsewhere is one of disgust and his upper lip slightly curls. He now properly raises his voice and bangs on the bar with his hand, speaking rapidly.

As Santa outlines his explanation as to why they wanted to close the shipyard (the site is by the sea and worth a fortune to property developers), Bardem looks away, turns back with a look of resignation and looks down while shrugging his shoulders and talking rapidly with an almost exasperated humour in his tone of voice. He then looks away (Santa possibly embarrassed at how much he is revealing of himself) again as he says, with one arm extended (calling attention), “Let me tell you something…I wouldn’t leave here even if they were giving the drinks away [elsewhere]”. He looks directly at Reina and then at Rico, “I’ve been here for three years and I intend to keep coming…even if you did sign the agreement” – a line that reveals his own sense of loyalty to these men but also the stock that he places in it as a quality (he is directly contrasting himself with Reina, who looks away). He sighs heavily and then turns to face Reina, standing centre frame, smiling as he fiddles with a napkin – “I could get a job serving drinks tomorrow. But if everyone gets laid off, there’ll be no customers”, his head tilted at an acute angle to the right (his gaze looking down and to the right), which places emphasis on what he’s saying but there’s also something slightly playful about it, “That pisses me off” (repeated, the second time as a mutter, as he looks directly at Reina).

He then turns back sideways on to the camera, head inclined forward. His voice is no longer raised but is still emotional – not a neutral tone – his voice catching on the line “You signed away your kids’ jobs […] We lost.” Close up of Nata on that line, then cut to José, who sighs and asks for another drink (subtly connecting José’s drinking to the defeat / losing of self).

The end to that part of the discussion is signalled by the camera panning (rather than cutting) to Nata as Rico crosses over to José. Cut back to Reina who decides to have another go.

Cut back to Santa, back to leaning against the bar in such a way that he fills most of the frame. Bardem stands upright with a sigh as Reina continues to push, Santa’s voice now tipping into both irritation and personal hostility. When the subject of Reina’s current job comes up, both men take a step toward each other and violence seems a real possibility; the tension is heightened by the editing, which first intercuts Nata casting a worried look in Santa’s direction, then Rico and José looking, then Lino and Sergei watching apprehensively, within the shot/reverse-shot of Santa and Reina’s exchange. This particular sequence of shots also reinforces Santa/Bardem as the axis of the scene and clearly delineates the spatial relations between everyone present (at no point during the sequence are all of the characters in shot). Bardem juts his chin out on the line “Un cabrón con pistola” [An arsehole with a gun] and pulls himself up to his full stature. The line about Reina’s wife (“She wanted me closer to her”) is said matter of fact but with a full glare maintained in their eye contact – Santa doesn’t repeat it (or retract it) when challenged and a heavy silence is allowed to hang.

Reina leaves. Santa sits back down, leaning forward on the bar, head down. Mutters “Gillipollas” [Dickhead]. Santa overstepping the line actually breaks the tension in the room (he is effectively back to ‘normal’) and – once Reina has gone – the other men visibly relax and their sense of humour reappears.

This scene occurs more than halfway through the film but – despite the tensions in the group being apparent earlier on (notably at the football match and the afore-mentioned scene where Santa pours away a drink paid for by Reina) – this is the first time we’re given a proper background as to exactly what happened at the shipyard; it becomes apparent that just as work has previously united them, it is also what currently divides them, whether in terms of their having found reemployment or simply in the different ways in which they’ve coped with its absence. León de Aranoa makes the point on the DVD commentary (which also features Bardem) that Reina isn’t a bad man, but the fact that he has found work separates him from his former colleagues. This is visually suggested in the framing: if you look above, you will see that Reina is always on the right of frame whereas the rest of them are on the left. The only exception is the family shot of Rico and Nata together – and Rico is often centre-frame part way between the two opposing sides – but the rest of the time even when in a group and they spill across most of screen, your attention is drawn to the left-hand side via either an actor’s movement of the depth of focus. The editing of the sequence also reinforces Santa’s status as the pillar of the group, a central point who is relied upon for his steadfast sturdiness. He reveals himself to have a far subtler (though firmly-held) take on the situation than Reina at the same time as he shows that he is unable to change who he is for the sake of an easier life (the sequence that directly precedes this one has already shown him to be a man who has to stick to his principles, albeit in a somewhat childish way in that specific instance). He is down but not out.

In terms of Bardem himself, the dichotomy between his powerful physique and the sensitivity he conveys with his eyes (on full display in this sequence) is something that was established at the start of his career (in the films he made with Bigas Luna), but his performance in Los lunes al sol serves as one of the best examples of his ability to convey complex psychological insight through subtle gestures and modes of behaviour. As I have said elsewhere, if you told me that I could only ‘keep’ one Bardem performance, this is the one I would choose.

 

References:

Fecé, J.L. and C. Pujol (2003) – ‘La crisis imaginada de un cine sin público’, in Once miradas sobre la crisis y el cine español, edited by L. Alonso García, Madrid: Ocho y medio, pp.147-166.

Fernández-Santos, E. (2002) – ‘”Mi mayor preocupación es el respeto al personaje”‘, El País, 24th September, p.41.

Marsé, J. (2004) – ‘Javier Bardem, un actor que inspira’, El País, Revista, 7th August, pp.34-35.

Perriam, C. (2003) – Stars and Masculinities in Spanish Cinema: From Banderas to Bardem, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ponga, Martín, and Torreiro (2002) – Hipótesis de realidad: el cine de Fernando León de Aranoa, Melilla: Consejería de Cultura de la C.A. de Melilla y UNED.

Quintana, Á. (2005) – ‘Modelos realistas en un tiempo de emergencia de lo político’, Archivos de la Filmoteca, no.49, February, pp.10-31.