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    Taylor Swift Brings Her Eras Tour to Argentina, Shaking El Monumental

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    On May 31, Florencia Romeo slept in a tent outside Argentina’s largest stadium with her girlfriend and her sister. They had heard rumors that Taylor Swift might be coming to Buenos Aires, and they wanted to be first in line.The rumors were right: Ms. Swift was coming, but it would take a while. Her concert was more than five months away.The tent stayed anyway, occupied by a rotating cast of 30 die-hard Swifties who worked together over 163 days to hold their spots in line for a chance to get as close as possible to their idol when she walked onstage Thursday in the first stop of her Eras Tour outside North America.“We have been waiting for this for many years,” said Ms. Romeo, 23, who quit her job as a cashier partly to dedicate herself to waiting in line. “We didn’t expect her to come, and then she did. So it was obvious that we had to do what we had to do.”Florencia Romeo, second from left, with some of her friends who camped out for months before the concert.Sarah Pabst for The New York TimesEvent organizers made camping fans disassemble their tents days before the show. Ms. Romeo’s group, which was first in line, put up a tarp for shelter instead.Sarah Pabst for The New York TimesMs. Swift’s Eras Tour officially went global on Thursday when the pop megastar began a new phase of shows that would take her to 25 cities across South America, Asia, Australia and Europe over the next 10 months.Since March, the North American stretch of the tour has become an economic marvel and a cultural force, cementing Ms. Swift’s status as one of the most influential, and beloved, people on the continent. Now, she is set to demonstrate that her fame and adoration go well beyond borders.There are few countries better to display the intense passion of her fans than Argentina. While Ms. Swift has become a certified global icon, Argentina has become known for worshiping icons with religious fervor.Consider that Juan and Eva Perón became Argentina’s president and first lady in 1946 but are still lionized in political chants, are displayed in portraits in many Argentine homes and are the inspiration for a namesake political movement that still runs the country. Diego Maradona, the soccer star, became seen as such a deity here that tens of thousands of Argentines belong to the, yes, Church of Maradona, a legally recognized religion in its 25th year. And after Lionel Messi and the national soccer team won the World Cup last year, the crush of four million adoring fans during the victory parade forced the players to abandon their buses and fly over in a helicopter instead.“She’s like the female Messi,” said Ms. Romeo, offering Ms. Swift about the highest praise an Argentine could nowadays. Some fans in Buenos Aires this week wore jerseys of the national soccer team with “SWIFT” on the back, while others passed out a sort of prayer card with Ms. Swift’s head superimposed over Jesus Christ’s.Maria Claude Arzapalo and her friends holding cards showing Taylor Swift depicted as Jesus.Sarah Pabst for The New York TimesMariale and Paula Nuñez, sisters from Peru, with the friendship bracelets that have become a badge of Swiftie fandom.Sarah Pabst for The New York TimesSo it was no surprise that Ms. Swift’s arrival in Argentina became a national event. It received intense news coverage; Buenos Aires named her an official guest of honor; and she became a figure in next week’s presidential election after some of her fans organized against the far-right candidate, Javier Milei. Meteorologists even described forecasts for sun or rain this weekend as “dry Swifties” or “wet Swifties.” (Friday called for “wet Swifties,” so organizers rescheduled that show for Sunday.)“Everyone in the country knows her, and everyone knows about this show,” Renata Schyfys, 15, said at the show on Thursday, wearing at least six inches of friendship bracelets, which have become a badge of Swiftie fandom.In a country of 46 million people, Ms. Swift sold roughly 200,000 tickets across three sold-out shows, and yet the waiting list still had more than 2.8 million people — enough to fill Argentina’s biggest soccer arena, El Monumental, another 40 times.That stadium was shaking on Thursday night with near-constant, ear-piercing screams coming from the more than 70,000 fans there who repeatedly chanted, “Olé, olé, olé, olé, Taylor, Taylor.”Even Ms. Swift, who has seen her share of huge crowds, seemed taken aback. “I am looking out to possibly what might be one of the most epic crowds to ever exist,” she told the audience. “This is on another level.”Later, she removed her earpieces and motioned that she was struggling to hear over the roar of the crowd. She paused for a full two minutes, soaking in her fans’ adoration.“I don’t know how to thank you enough for the way you’re treating me tonight,” she said. “I love you so, so much, and I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to come see you.”Jack Nicas/The New York TimesThe show on Thursday was Ms. Swift’s first major concert in South America, the first of nine this month in Argentina and Brazil. After waiting for so long, many Swifties on Thursday said they had made a sort of pilgrimage, many from across the continent.Nahuel Ochoa, a medical student wearing a homemade bedazzled jumpsuit and a glittery jacket, had taken a bus with 50 other fans from the city of San Luis, 12 hours away. Unable to get a room in Buenos Aires, where hotels were nearly sold out, he was planning to take the bus back after the show — and then return on Saturday to see Ms. Swift again.“We have loved Taylor since we were 10 years old — we have been waiting 13 years,” Mr. Ochoa, 23, said, sitting alongside his childhood friend Andrea Garro. “Her songs reflect the majority of what we go through. It’s a form of expressing ourselves in a way that we can’t.”Ms. Garro, 23, a law student, added that Ms. Swift’s music helped her get past a deep depression. “We feel seen,” she said.But there was no show of devotion greater than the more than 100 fans who camped out in shifts outside the stadium for months. After Ms. Romeo and her friends staked out their spot and attracted local news attention, other tents followed.Fans lined up on the street the morning of the show.Sarah Pabst for The New York TimesIn a country of 46 million people, Ms. Swift sold roughly 200,000 tickets across three sold-out shows.Sarah Pabst for The New York TimesThe group of mostly young women set up shifts using a spreadsheet, with ideally at least two people present at the tent at all times. The 30 members of Ms. Romeo’s tent had to spend a minimum of 40 hours there a month, with each member spending about 10 to 12 nights at the tent on average. After spending the first few days sleeping with just blankets, they added a mattress.“She has the best relationship with her fans and is the one that can achieve this sort of mania,” said Lucas Forte, 24, a member of another tent who had slept outside the stadium for five nights since September. “No one camped out for the Weeknd, for example.”Ms. Swift herself was impressed with the effort. “I heard you guys were camping out to get good spots?” she asked the crowd on Thursday. “I actually didn’t believe it until I saw a video.”The fans camping out were not holding a place to get tickets to the show. Those were all sold online. Rather, the tents were set up so they could be first in line when the doors to the show opened and the fans could sprint to the guardrails along the stage for a closer view.Event organizers helped make sure the fans who had camped out were first in line — yet many still ended up behind rows of people whose pricier tickets had allowed them to enter even earlier.But some campers eventually reached the barricade along the stage.“I smashed my knee trying to get there,” said Atenas Astuni, 23, a member of the first-in-line tent, her voice hoarse the Friday morning after the show. “But if I had to smash my knee again to repeat exactly what happened yesterday, I would do it without hesitation.”The waiting list for people who could not get tickets stretched to more than 2.8 million.Sarah Pabst for The New York Times More

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      ‘The Trial’ Review: Seeking Justice for Argentina

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      Ulises de la Orden carves a documentary from film of the 1985 prosecution of the military leaders who had seized control of the government.Crafted entirely out of the televised 1985 trial of Argentina’s military junta, “The Trial” lays bare horrific crimes while showing the courage of victims, survivors and their families. Ulises de la Orden’s conscientious documentary is a necessary act of memory — for such is the only way justice truly endures — and it reminds viewers of the Dante-esque extent of the abuses beyond the stories of “the disappeared,” the thousands who were snatched and killed because they were labeled left-wing opponents or on other pretexts.De la Orden’s respectful, smartly abridged account draws on the 530 hours recorded by public television to compile a kind of oral history, rather than tracking the legal arguments. The testimony by dignified witnesses from all walks of life is gripping, even when viewed obliquely because of the camera placement. Cutaway shots show the smug-looking military brass who are on trial, the judges watching as impassively as they can manage and a rapt crowd in the courtroom.The director rightly recognizes that nothing is to be gained by smoothing over the facts. The military junta that seized power (from President Isabel Perón) in 1976, and its cronies and followers raped, murdered, tortured and kidnapped. They trafficked orphans of “subversives,” and stole (real estate and cash, while also raiding homes for everything from cookbooks to women’s underwear). We hear all about their mafialike behavior — throwing their victims out of airplanes into the sea — and how they made a grisly mockery of the rule of law.The 177-minute film concludes with the dramatic sentencing of the regime’s de facto president, Jorge Rafael Videla, and others. The document might resemble an artifact from another era. But it offers a stirring universal example of justice served, at a time when so many American voters fear the prospect of an authoritarian president already impeached once for inciting an insurrection.The TrialNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 57 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Wild Life’ Review: Their Land Is Our Land

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      This documentary looks at the efforts of Kristine McDivitt Tompkins and Douglas Tompkins to preserve stretches of land in Argentina and Chile.“Wild Life,” the latest eco-conscious documentary from the filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (“Free Solo,” “Meru”) is a rickety helicopter tour of a fascinating marriage; nearly every scene makes you want to stop and explore in more detail. Things move fast with barely a beat of introduction. Those unfamiliar with the American philanthropists Kristine McDivitt Tompkins and her husband, Douglas Tompkins, may feel in the film’s opening minutes as disoriented as if they’ve been dropped in the wilderness. One catches on that the Tompkins purchased a lot of it: more than one million acres in Argentina and Chile, with the goal of gifting the land back as recognized national parks. The scale of the couple’s ambition teeters on the surreal. Asked in archival footage about a massive snow-flocked volcano on the horizon, Doug casually replies, “Yeah, that came with it.”The film doesn’t do much besides pair snippets of the Tompkins’ biographies with staggeringly beautiful shots of Patagonia’s natural splendors. An early effort to structure the running time around Kris’s first summit of a mountain named in her honor by her husband, who died in 2015, unspools clumsily and is eventually set aside. Chin, a climber himself, joined Kris on the trek and must have decided the footage was less interesting than the story that brought her and Doug to Chile in the first place — an unusual adventure in 20th-century capitalism that begins in 1968 with Doug and his friend Yvon Chouinard embarking on a nine-month van expedition through South America and returning home to each start apparel companies: one would found Esprit; the other, Patagonia.These two mountaineers on the precipice of great wealth were also free-spirited “dirtbags,” a word Chin uses with reverence. Yvon doesn’t disagree, explaining, “If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent.” Yvon would soon hire a teenage Kris to work at Patagonia as an assistant packer; she rose to become chief executive. In her 40s, Kris met and married Doug, completing the loop.Chin and Vasarhelyi, married themselves, understand the unity and isolation couples experience when spurred by a shared goal. The details of negotiating this staggering land donation with Chile’s former president Michelle Bachelet include a moment of suspense that’s hard to follow. (The filmmakers seem too shy to ask questions about costs and legal clauses.) But what is clear is the Tompkins’ twin passions for nature and romance, which merge in the metaphors Kris uses to describe her husband’s effect on her life: “You get hit by lightning,” she beams, adding later, “Once, I was a pebble in a stream. Not anymore.”Kris and Doug’s moving love story should be the emotional foundation of the documentary, but it’s edited in a bit too late. Paradoxically, however, we also crave more scenes of their individual transitions from bohemians to business titans. We’re tantalized by a glimpse of Patagonia meetings held barefoot and cross-legged on the corporate carpet, an allusion to Yvon and Doug’s competition to run the most ethical company (though there’s no need for the klutzy needle-drop of the Tears for Fears hit “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”), and a hasty mention of Doug’s efforts to course-correct the environmentally destructive fast-fashion industry with a 1990 Esprit advertisement asking mall rat teenagers whether their clothes are “something you really need.” I’d watch a real-time documentary on just that next board meeting.Wild LifeRated PG-13 for brief strong language. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Trial in ‘Argentina, 1985’ Began Quest for Justice That Continues Today

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      “Argentina, 1985” has resurrected the country’s military rule, which ended 40 years ago. The quest persists to hold those accused of crimes against humanity accountable.BUENOS AIRES — The bones of a man, brought into light in a laboratory, had spoken.For years, he was kept inside a blue plastic box on a shelf with hundreds of other boxes containing unidentified human remains believed to belong to victims of the brutal military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983.Lying on a table in the Buenos Aires headquarters of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, his skeleton told a story: He was about 25 years old and stood 5 feet 8 inches to 6 feet tall. Five gunshot wounds, one to the head and four to the pelvis, had killed him.And now, more than 30 years since his discovery in a mass grave, he is on the verge of being identified.“When they pass from having a number to having a name, it’s wonderful,” said Patricia Bernardi, a forensic anthropologist and a founder of the team, a nonprofit that works on cases related to abuses committed under military rule.“When they pass from having a number to having a name, it’s wonderful,” said Patricia Bernardi, a forensic anthropologist, seen among bins of human remains.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesThe identification of victims is part of a broader effort to deliver justice and accountability 40 years after the end of the dictatorship, a traumatic chapter that is in the spotlight again because of “Argentina, 1985,” a film that has earned an Oscar nomination for best international feature.A historical drama, it depicts a real landmark case that a team of lawyers pressed against military leaders in a trial that ended with the convictions of five members of the military junta, including the dictators Jorge Videla and Emilio Massera, who received life sentences. Four others were acquitted.The military unleashed a wave of repression to eliminate so-called subversives, a category that came to include political dissidents, student activists, labor organizers, journalists, intellectuals and clergy members. Human rights groups estimate that as many as 30,000 people were killed or disappeared during the dictatorship.Ricardo Darin, background center, and Peter Lanzani, right, in a scene from “Argentina, 1985,” an Oscar-nominee for best international feature.Amazon Studios, via Associated PressIn a pivotal scene in the movie, a character based on a real-life prosecutor tells a panel of judges that the trial can help forge a peace based on justice and memorializing the atrocities.“This is our opportunity,” he says. “It may be our last.”Rather than an end, those words, taken from the real closing arguments, were a beginning. To this day, in courtrooms across Argentina, roughly 180 former military officials, police officers and civilians are being prosecuted for crimes against humanity.With more than 300 open investigations and 14 trials, the process is “permanently alive,” said Estela de Carlotto, the president of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, a human rights organization started by women searching for their grandchildren who were born in captivity to political prisoners and then given to other families.Some investigations are focused on crimes committed in clandestine detention centers where hundreds of people were tortured and killed. In one case, a former marine captain is on trial for orchestrating the illegal adoption of his brother’s daughter, who was born in a detention center and raised by another member of the military. Her parents are still missing.Jorge Videla, center right, was sworn in as president in Buenos Aires in 1976, accompanied by Emilio Massera, second from left.Eduardo Di Baia/Associated PressIn total, more than 1,100 military personnel, police officers and civilians have been convicted of crimes against humanity since 2006, including 58 last year.Argentina’s reckoning with its past has been far more extensive than that of neighboring countries also scarred by repressive military rule, including Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. Amnesty laws in Brazil have blocked military trials, while a small number of trials have occurred in Uruguay. Many top officials convicted of dictatorship-era crimes in Chile received reduced sentences.“These trials are right and necessary,” said Maria Ángeles Ramos, one of the lead federal prosecutors of dictatorship-era crimes in Argentina.“These trials are right and necessary,” said Maria Ángeles Ramos, one of the lead federal prosecutors of dictatorship-era crimes in Argentina, seen last month.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York Times“We made this decision that what happened is unforgivable and Argentina cannot afford to ignore its past,” Ms. Ramos said. “That is a very big self-critique as a society. It’s a value that puts us in a distinctive place in the world.”The pursuit of justice has not been easy. After the 1985 trial of leaders of the junta, the government enacted laws that blocked most other prosecutions. A former president also pardoned the convicted military commanders.In the 1990s, victims and relatives of those who had disappeared staged protests outside the homes of former military rulers and others believed to have violated human rights.Teresa Laborde’s mother, Adriana Calvo, a physicist and university professor, was a key witness at the 1985 trial. She described having been handcuffed and blindfolded and calling out for the baby she had just delivered in the back seat of a Ford Falcon as she was moved from one clandestine detention center to another.Teresa Laborde in the arms of her mother, Adriana Calvo, in a family photograph. Ms. Calvo and her daughter were held in clandestine detention centers.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesThe newborn was Ms. Laborde, now 45. She and her mother were eventually released.“That trial that everyone says was an example, in my house we lived it as the gateway to impunity,” Ms. Laborde said, referring to the acquittal of four of the leaders and light sentences for some others. “Justice meant holding the last torturer responsible.”A pivotal moment came in 2003, when the Argentine Congress, responding to mounting public pressure, abolished the laws that had halted prosecutions of dictatorship-era crimes. In 2006, a court handed down the first sentence under a relaunched prosecution process.“In some sense, it was all of civil society that built this,” said Natalia Federman, a human rights lawyer and executive director of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. “It became impossible for the state to say, We’re not going to do anything.”The forensic team’s work has been a key part of trials. More than 1,400 bodies have been recovered, with around 800 identified — some washed up on beaches after being hurled from planes during so-called death flights. Others, like the man in the forensic team’s laboratory, were discovered in unmarked graves.Ms. Bernardi measuring a bone at a laboratory of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesThe team is keeping details about the man confidential until his identification is confirmed, but he is believed to have been a prisoner of one of the dictatorship’s detention centers. Evidence that emerged in trials involving people he was buried with helped analysts piece together a hypothesis about his identity.It underscores how trials are a crucial part of “building memory,” Ms. Ramos said, “so we all know what occurred and we talk about it.”Argentina’s military generally does not discuss the continuing investigations and trials, and its rank and file are now made up entirely of officers who joined after the dictatorship.“We do everything possible — and the continuity of the trials has to do with that — to ensure that what happened is not forgotten,” said Eduardo Jozami, who works as director of human rights at the Defense Ministry and who was imprisoned during the dictatorship.But time is a looming enemy: More than 1,000 people under investigation have died, and so have victims and their relatives.“There is a slowness, sometimes an indifference,” Ms. de Carlotto said of the pace of justice. “But our permanence and resistance is present.”A view of “Capuchita” (“Little Hood”), the attic of the Officer’s Club at the Naval Mechanics School, where people were secretly detained. Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York TimesAt a trial of crimes at clandestine detention centers, Laura Treviño recalled the early hours of Sept. 11, 1976, when she was 18. Six men in civilian clothes arrived at her family’s home in a city near Buenos Aires and took away her 17-year-old brother.The men claimed to be part of the army and asked about the teenager, Victor Treviño, a left-wing activist agitating for lower student transit fares.The men, some of them wearing ski masks and carrying guns, went to the back of the home, Ms. Treviño testified.She heard a commotion as they ordered her brother to dress. As the men led him out, his mother asked where he was being taken.“‘You’ll find out soon,’ they told her,” Ms. Treviño testified. But they never did.“That’s what we all want: to know what happened to him,” she testified. “To all of them.” More

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      Ricardo Darín es la cábala de Argentina en los Oscar

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      El actor ha protagonizado las cuatro películas por las que su país ha sido nominado este siglo, pero él cree que más que su talento, su mayor suerte es la confianza que otros han tenido en él.WEST HOLLYWOOD, California — Hace tiempo que la fortuna favorece a Ricardo Darín. Más que al concepto subjetivo de talento, es a la providencia, expresada como la confianza inquebrantable que tienen los demás en sus capacidades, a lo que el actor atribuye su galardonada carrera como la estrella de cine argentina más célebre en el mundo.“He tenido toda la suerte que mis padres no tuvieron como actores”, comentó durante una entrevista reciente en el hotel Sunset Tower. “Muchas veces me han valorado mucho más de lo que yo mismo me valoro, y luego yo pienso, ‘¿Será que me merezco tanto?’”.El último ejemplo de su relación con la suerte es su papel como el fiscal Julio Strassera en Argentina, 1985, un drama judicial histórico sobre el juicio a las Juntas, cuando los líderes militares fueron procesados por violaciones de los derechos humanos durante la anterior dictadura. Dirigida por Santiago Mitre, le valió a Argentina una nominación al Oscar como mejor largometraje internacional.Darín parece ser el amuleto de la suerte de su país cuando se trata de los premios de la Academia. Ha protagonizado las cuatro películas por las que Argentina ha sido nominada este siglo: El hijo de la novia, Relatos salvajes y El secreto de sus ojos, que se llevó la estatuilla en 2010. A lo largo de los años, Argentina ha postulado a la Academia otras producciones estelarizadas por Darín, lo que significa que, aunque no todas fueron nominadas, las películas en las que aparece son casi sinónimo de lo mejor del cine argentino.Desde el primer apretón de manos, Darín, de 66 años, irradia un aura acogedora. Vestido de manera informal con jeans y una camiseta color azul marino, habla con una calidez y franqueza que la mayoría de la gente reserva para sus amigos más íntimos. Ese temperamento se traduce en la pantalla.“Ricardo tiene un inmenso poder de empatía con la audiencia, y eso es raro”, afirmó el director Juan José Campanella, colaborador de Darín en cuatro largometrajes.“Ricardo tiene un inmenso poder de empatía con la audiencia, y eso es raro”, dijo el director Juan José Campanella.David Billet para The New York TimesAunque la pasión por la interpretación la heredó de sus padres, que trabajaban como actores en Buenos Aires, ninguno de los dos estaba entusiasmado con que continuara el oficio familiar. “No me pelearon, pero tampoco me ponían fichas para que lo hiciera”, recordó.Darín considera que su camino está predestinado. Durante su infancia, visitaba con regularidad platós de cine y televisión, y escenarios teatrales, y actuó profesionalmente por primera vez a los 3 años en la serie de 1960 Soledad Monsalvo. A los 10, debutó en el escenario junto a sus padres. A los 14, cuando asistió a su primer taller de teatro, Darín ya se sentía un veterano que había experimentado de primera mano muchas facetas del oficio.Durante un tiempo, en la adolescencia, se planteó ser veterinario, psicólogo o incluso abogado. Pero al final, el mundo con el que siempre había estado familiarizado le convenció para quedarse. Las puertas se le abrían con facilidad, con frecuentes invitaciones a participar en diversos proyectos.Esa confianza de gente notable del sector es lo que él llama fortuna. Darín guarda un entrañable recuerdo de la directora de televisión Diana Álvarez, que se peleó con una cadena en 1982 para que él formara parte del programa Nosotros y los miedos. Ella vio en él un potencial que otros no pudieron.“La suerte en nuestro oficio es muy importante”, dice Darín. “Hay una gran cantidad de gente talentosa allá afuera con mucho que contar que no encuentran oportunidades”.En la década de 1990, Darín tuvo un gran éxito en la comedia televisiva Mi cuñado, en la que interpretaba a un torpe impertinente pero encantador. Su contrato le impedía participar en otros proyectos televisivos, pero le permitió dedicarse al cine. Entre sus papeles filmográficos está su primera película con Campanella, El mismo amor, la misma lluvia (1999), que ayudó a otros directores a ver más allá de su personaje en la televisión.Las películas de Darín nominadas por la Academia, en el sentido de las agujas del reloj desde arriba a la izquierda: Argentina, 1985, El hijo de la novia, El secreto de sus ojos y Relatos salvajes.Amazon Prime; Sony Pictures Classics; Sony Pictures Classics; María Antolini/Sony Pictures Classics.Uno de ellos, Fabián Bielinsky, le dio el papel de estafador ruin en el filme de suspenso Nueve reinas, estrenado en Argentina en 2000.“Me dijo, ‘Yo no había pensado en vos para este personaje. Porque vos sos demasiado simpático. Y yo no quiero que la audiencia tenga ningún tipo de empatía con él’”, relató Darín.En opinión de Campanella, “hay una sola cosa que Ricardo no puede ser, y eso es antipático. El testimonio más claro de esto es Nueve reinas, donde él hace de un estafador amoral, y aun así estamos de su lado”.Al año siguiente, llegó la conmovedora El hijo de la novia, de Campanella, que aprovechó la sensibilidad cómica de Darín para darle la vida al papel del dueño de un restaurante que se ocupa de sus padres ancianos.“Una vez un crítico lo llamó ‘nuestro Henry Fonda’ porque proyecta entereza”, señaló Campanella. “Pero tiene una cosa que Fonda no tenía, lo cual es un gran sentido del humor”.Darín sostiene que fue el estreno consecutivo de Nueve reinas y El hijo de la novia lo que cimentó su carrera cinematográfica.“Fue como una muy buena carta de presentación para un actor tener la posibilidad de mostrar dos facetas absolutamente opuestas casi al mismo tiempo”, asegura Darín. “A pesar de que yo ya era muy conocido por cuestiones televisivas y en teatro, ahí yo empecé a sentir que mis colegas me empezaron a considerar un poco mejor”.Desde entonces, el actor ha disfrutado con los papeles que eligió, incluida la aclamada El secreto de sus ojos, de Campanella, en la que interpretó a un investigador atormentado por un espantoso caso sin resolver.Otro de los papeles favoritos de Darín es la comedia dramática Truman (2017), centrada en un enfermo terminal que pasa sus últimos días junto a sus mejores amigos, uno humano y otro canino. Su personaje sarcástico le recordó a Darín a su difunto padre, también llamado Ricardo Darín, a quien describió como un peculiar hombre del Renacimiento con un sentido del humor mordaz e ideas descabelladas que a otros les resultaban difíciles de digerir.Hollywood le ha tendido la mano un puñado de veces, pero él la ha rechazado, sobre todo porque lo más difícil para un actor es pensar en otro idioma, afirmó, y añadió que los primeros planos revelan cuando alguien está recitando de memoria en lugar de habitar una emoción.“Siempre he confiado mucho en mi estómago, más que en mi corazón o mi cabeza”, explicó Darín, y luego añadió, señalando su vientre: “Confío en cómo el material me pega aquí”.Hollywood lo ha buscado, pero Darín no está muy interesado porque, según dice, pensar en otro idioma es lo más difícil para un actor.David Billet para The New York TimesEn Argentina, su papel en Relatos salvajes (estrenada en Estados Unidos en 2015), de Damián Szifron, como un ciudadano frustrado que lucha contra la opresiva burocracia, fue muy bien acogido por el público. “Ricardo tiene una mirada lúcida sobre las realidades que afectan a su país”, aseguró Szifron. “Es una figura popular y, al mismo tiempo, un actor sofisticado”.Para Argentina, 1985, Mitre y Darín acordaron no imitar la voz ni los gestos exactos del Strassera real, sino que se tomaron cierta libertad artística en su recreación.Mitre, que había dirigido a Darín como un presidente argentino ficticio en la saga política de 2017 La cordillera, dijo que admiraba cómo el actor produce una interpretación veraz a través de una síntesis de sus propias sensibilidades y las del personaje.“Es como si la cámara lo pudiera mostrar por completo, mostrarlo en toda su complejidad”, comentó Mitre. “Siempre que ves a Ricardo actuar, sabés que va a haber gran honestidad en la pantalla”.Más allá de la positiva recepción crítica de Argentina, 1985” —y de su triunfo en los Globos de Oro—, Darín dijo que el efecto más significativo de la película fue concienciar a una generación más joven sobre un capítulo doloroso de la historia del país.“No podemos olvidar que detrás de esta recuperación del evento histórico que nos ha traído tantos elogios y felicidad, hay una historia de mucho dolor, de esa clase de dolor que no tiene bálsamo”, señaló Darín con expresión solemne.Su hijo Chino Darín, con el que ha creado una productora, continúa la tradición interpretativa de su familia. Ambos protagonizan y producen la comedia de 2019 La odisea de los giles. Darín nunca se opuso a que su hijo se interesara por el oficio, solo le aconsejaba que siguiera el camino que le diera más satisfacciones.“Soy de los que creen que lo más importante en la vida es tratar de ser feliz”, dijo Darín. “Entre más cerca está uno de su vocación, tiene más chance de ser feliz”. More

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      Ricardo Darín: Argentina’s Lucky Charm at the Oscars

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      When the country has a nominated film, it has usually starred this veteran. But the actor says other people have believed in his talent more than he has.WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Fortune has long favored Ricardo Darín. More than the subjective concept of talent, it is providence, manifested as other people’s unwavering confidence in his abilities, that the actor credits for his storied career as Argentina’s most celebrated film star internationally.“I’ve had all the luck that my parents didn’t have as actors,” he said in Spanish during a recent interview at the Sunset Tower Hotel in West Hollywood. “Many times, people have valued me far more than I value myself, and I often think, ‘Do I deserve all that?’”The latest example of his relationship with Lady Luck is his turn as the real-life prosecutor Julio Strassera in “Argentina, 1985,” a historical courtroom drama about the Trial of the Juntas, when military leaders were tried for human rights violations during the former dictatorship. Directed by Santiago Mitre, it earned Argentina an Oscar nomination for best international feature film.Darín seems to be his country’s lucky charm when it comes to the Academy Awards. He has starred in all four movies to earn Argentina a nod this century, including “Son of the Bride,” “Wild Tales” and “The Secret in Their Eyes,” which took home the statuette in 2010. And Argentina has also submitted several other Darín-led productions to the academy over the years — meaning that even though they didn’t all make the cut, the films in which he appears are almost synonymous with the best of Argentine cinema.From the first handshake, Darín, 66, radiates a welcoming aura. Casually dressed in bluejeans and a navy sweater, he speaks with a warmth and candor that most people reserve for their closest friends. That temperament translates onscreen.“Ricardo has an immense power to elicit empathy from the audience, and that’s rare,” said the director Juan José Campanella, who has collaborated with Darín on four features.“Ricardo has an immense power to elicit empathy from the audience, and that’s rare,” said the director Juan José Campanella.David Billet for The New York TimesThough the actor inherited a passion for performance from his parents, who were both working actors in Buenos Aires, neither was enthusiastic about his carrying on the family’s craft. “They didn’t fight me on it, but they also didn’t encourage me to do it,” he recalled.Darín thinks of his path as preordained. He was a regular on film and TV sets and theater stages in childhood, first acting professionally at 3 years old in the 1960 series “Soledad Monsalvo.” At 10 he debuted onstage alongside his parents. By the time he attended his first theater workshop at 14, Darín felt like a seasoned veteran who had already experienced many facets of the job firsthand.For a time in adolescence, he contemplated becoming a veterinarian, a psychologist or even a lawyer. But in the end, the world he had always been familiar with persuaded him to stay. Doors opened easily for him, with frequent invitations to participate in a variety of projects.The Run-Up to the 2023 OscarsThe 95th Academy Awards will be presented on March 12 in Los Angeles.Tom Cruise’s Gravitational Pull: Stars were starstruck when the “Top Gun: Maverick” headliner showed up at the Oscar nominees luncheon.Hong Chau Interview: In a conversation with The Times, the actress, who is nominated for her supporting role in “The Whale,” says she still feels like an underdog.Andrea Riseborough Controversy: Confused about the brouhaha surrounding the best actress nominee? We explain why the “To Leslie” star’s nod was controversial.The Making of ‘Naatu Naatu’: The composers and choreographer from the Indian blockbuster “RRR” explain how they created the propulsive sequence that is nominated for best song.That trust from notable people in the industry is what he calls fortune. Darín has dear memories of the television director Diana Álvarez, who got into a fight with a network in 1982 so that he could be part of the show “Nosotros y Los Miedos.” She saw in him potential that others couldn’t.“In our profession, luck is very important,” Darín said. “There are very talented people out there with lots to tell who can’t find opportunities.”In the 1990s, Darín found immense success as the co-star of the sitcom “Mi Cuñado” (“My Brother-in-Law”), playing an impertinent but charming screw-up. His contract restricted him from other TV ventures but allowed him to pursue films. Among them was his first outing with Campanella, “The Same Love, the Same Rain” (1999), which helped other directors see beyond his TV persona.Darín’s academy-nominated films, clockwise from top left: “Argentina, 1985,” “Son of the Bride,” “The Secret in Their Eyes” and “Wild Tales.” Amazon Prime (“Argentina, 1985)”; Sony Pictures Classics (“Son of the Bride,” “Wild Tales”); María Antolini/Sony Pictures Classics (“The Secret in Their Eyes”)One of them, Fabián Bielinsky, cast him in the thriller “Nine Queens” (released in Argentina in 2000) as a sleazy con man. “He told me, ‘I hadn’t thought about you for this role. You are too charismatic, and I don’t want the audience to have any empathy for him,’” Darín recalled.In Campanella’s view, “There’s only one thing Ricardo cannot be, and that is unlikable. The clearest proof is ‘Nine Queens,’ where he plays an amoral crook, but we still root for him.”Campanella’s heartfelt “Son of the Bride” arrived the next year and mined Darín’s comic sensibilities for the role of a restaurant owner dealing with his aging parents.“Once an Argentine critic called him ‘our Henry Fonda’ because he projects great integrity,” Campanella said. “But he has something that Fonda didn’t, which is a great sense of humor.”Darín maintains that it was the one-two punch of “Nine Queens” and “Son of the Bride” that cemented his film career.“It was a great calling card for an actor to have the possibility of showing two absolutely opposite facets almost at once,” Darín said. “Even though I was already well known for TV and theater, that’s when I started to feel my colleagues were seeing me in a better light.”Since then, Darín has enjoyed his choice of roles, including Campanella’s acclaimed “The Secret in Their Eyes,” in which he starred as an investigator haunted by a gruesome, unresolved case.Another of Darín’s personal favorites is the dramedy “Truman” (2017), centered on a terminally ill man spending his final days alongside his best friends — one human and one canine. His wry character reminded Darín of his late father, also named Ricardo Darín, whom he described as a peculiar Renaissance man with an acid sense of humor and wild ideas that others found difficult to digest.Hollywood has reached out a handful of times, but he has declined, mostly because the most difficult thing for an actor to do is to think in another language, he said, adding that close-ups reveal when someone is reciting from memory rather than inhabiting an emotion.“I’ve always trusted my gut, more than my heart or my head,” Darín explained, then added, motioning to his stomach, “I trust in how the material hits me right here.”Hollywood has come calling, but Darín is largely uninterested because, he said, thinking in another language is the most difficult thing for an actor to do.David Billet for The New York TimesIn Argentina, his turn in Damián Szifron’s “Wild Tales” (released stateside in 2015) as a frustrated citizen who fights back against oppressive bureaucracy was widely embraced by audiences. “Ricardo has a lucid outlook on the realities that affect his country,” Szifron said. “He is a popular figure while at the same time being a sophisticated actor.”For “Argentina, 1985,” Mitre and Darín agreed not to mimic the voice or exact mannerisms of the real Strassera, but instead took a degree of artistic liberty in their re-creation.Mitre, who had directed Darín as a fictional Argentine president in the 2017 political saga “The Summit,” said he admired how the actor produces a truthful performance through a synthesis of his own sensibilities and the character’s.“It’s as if the camera could capture him in his entirety, show him in all his complexity,” Mitre said. “Whenever you see Ricardo act, you know there will be great honesty onscreen.”Beyond the positive critical reception of “Argentina, 1985” — and its Golden Globe win — Darín said the film’s most significant effect was making a younger generation aware of a sorrowful chapter in the country’s history.“We can’t forget that behind this reclaiming of the historical event that has brought us a lot of praise and happiness, there’s a deeply painful story about the kind of suffering for which there is no balm,” Darín noted with a solemn expression.His family’s acting tradition is being carried on by his son, Chino Darín, with whom he has formed a production company. The two starred in and produced the 2019 comedy “Heroic Losers.” The elder Darín never opposed his child’s interest in the craft, only advising him to follow the path that would bring the most satisfaction.“I’m one of those people who believe the most important thing in life is to try to be happy,” Darín said. “The closer you are to your vocation, the better chance you have at being happy.” More

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      in Music

      A Drummer Showing the Way to ‘the Freest Musical Universe’

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      BUENOS AIRES — The crowd at a recent concert exploded into rapturous cries as the group’s frontman walked onto the stage and began setting a drum beat, launching his band on an improvised journey across musical genres that culminated an hour later in a standing ovation.Over a 30-year career, Miguel Tomasín has released more than 100 albums, helped turn his Argentine band into one of South America’s most influential underground acts, and helped hundreds of people with disabilities express their voices through music.Mr. Tomasín has achieved this in part because of a distinctive artistic vision that comes, his family, fellow musicians and friends said, from having been born with Down syndrome. His story, they say, shows how art can help someone overcome social barriers, and what can happen with an effort to elevate a person’s talents, rather than focusing on their limitations.“We make music so that people enjoy it,” Mr. Tomasín said in an interview at his home in the windswept Argentine city of Rio Gallegos, near the country’s southern tip. Music is “the best, magical,” he added.Though his prolific output has not achieved commercial success, it has had a significant impact on how people with disabilities are perceived in Argentina and beyond.At a recent sold-out Reynols concert in Buenos Aires, Miguel Tomasín sang and played all the instruments on the stage in front of 600 fans.Video by Centro Cultural KirchnerIt has also inspired members of his band, Reynols, to establish long-running music workshops for people with disabilities. And other musicians they have worked with have started more bands whose members include those with developmental disabilities.“Thanks to Miguel, many people who had never interacted with a person with Down syndrome were able to become aware of their world through music,” said Patricio Conlazo, an occasional Reynols member who, after playing with Mr. Tomasín, started music projects for people with disabilities in southern Argentina.Reynols’s unconventional approach to music has also inspired established musicians.“I was reminded by him that you can play music as you like,” said Mitsuru Tabata, a veteran Japanese experimental musician who has recorded with Reynols.But the band’s freewheeling sound has its detractors, too.A prominent British music journalist, Ben Watson, called their music “annoying racket,” in his 2010 book “Honesty Is Explosive!” where he suggested that Mr. Tomasín’s presence in the band was a publicity stunt.The members of Reynols, from left; Alan Courtis, Patricio Conlazo, Mr. Tomasín and Roberto Conlazo in their dressing room before a concert in Buenos Aires.Mr. Tomasín playing the drums during the concert in Buenos Aires.In its first years, the band struggled to find venues and labels interested in their improvisational sound. A turning point came nearly a quarter century ago, in 1998, when they unexpectedly became a house band on an Argentine public television program, which exposed them to a new audience.The job made Mr. Tomasín the first Argentine with Down syndrome to be employed by a national broadcaster.“It was revolutionary, because people with these conditions were largely hidden from public view,” said Claudio Canali, who helped produce the program.A New York Times reporter and a photographer spent a week in Argentina to interview Mr. Tomasín and document his life, both in Buenos Aires and Rio Gallegos. Mr. Tomasín speaks in short phrases that are largely understandable to a Spanish speaker, but sometimes require an accompanying relative to put them in context.Mr. Tomasín is 58, though, like many other artists he lowers his age, insisting he is 54.He was born in Buenos Aires, the second of three children of middle-class parents. His father was a Navy captain, his mother a fine arts graduate who stayed home to raise the children.In the 1960s, most Argentine families sent children with Down syndrome to special boarding schools, which in practice were little more than asylums, according to his younger sister, Jorgelina Tomasín.After visiting several of them, his parents decided to raise Mr. Tomasín at home, where he was treated no differently than his siblings.Mr. Tomasín posing with a fan after the show in Buenos Aires.Mr. Tomasín improvising on the piano while wearing his favorite Reynols T-shirt.He started showing interest in sounds as a toddler, banging on kitchen pots and playing with a family piano, prompting his grandparents to buy him a toy drum kit.Later, after coming home from school, Mr. Tomasín would go straight to his room and play all three cassettes that he owned from beginning to end, making the crooners Julio Iglesias and Palito Ortega an inescapable house presence for years, Ms. Tomasín said.By the early 1990s, the close-knit household began to separate, as his siblings grew up and left home, leaving Mr. Tomasín, by then a young adult, feeling isolated.To fill the void, his parents decided to send him to a music school, but struggled to find one that would accept him.One day, in 1993, they tried an unassuming place they came across while shopping in their Buenos Aires neighborhood, the School for the Comprehensive Formation of Musicians, which was run by young avant-garde rockers who taught classes to subsidize their rehearsal space.“‘Hi, I’m Miguel, a great famous drummer,’” Roberto Conlazo, who ran the school with his brother Patricio, recalled Mr. Tomasín saying at their introduction, despite his having never, up to that point, touched a professional drum kit.Mr. Tomasín checking his drums.From left, Patricio Conlazo Mr. Tomasín and Roberto Conlazo during a rehearsal.The school became an unexpected artistic home for Mr. Tomasín. In a country that remains deeply divided by the legacy of a military dictatorship and a Marxist insurgency, it was rare for a military family to even associate with bohemian artists, let alone entrust a child with them.But Mr. Tomasín’s family and the artists ended up becoming lifelong friends, an early example of how his lack of social prejudices has influenced others to reconsider long-held assumptions. His spontaneity and lack of insecurities made Mr. Tomasín a natural improviser, and an ideal fit for the school’s goal to create music without preconceived ideas.“We were looking for the freest musical universe possible,” said Alan Courtis, who taught at the school. “Miguel became the alarm that woke up the dormant side of our brains.”Roberto Conlazo and Mr. Courtis had already been playing in a group that eventually would become Reynols, a name loosely inspired by Burt Reynolds.After giving Mr. Tomasín some drumming lessons, they decided to bring him into the band. Their collaboration, however, got off to an uncertain start.Mr. Tomasín in the dining room at his brother’s home in Rio Gallegos, Argentina.Mr. Tomasín with his brother, Juan Mario Tomasín, and a neighborhood dog on the banks of the Rio Gallegos River.During one of their first shows, in 1994, a crowd of high school students broke into a mosh pit, which Mr. Courtis and Roberto Conlazo stoked by spraying deodorant into the audience’s faces, pulling out guitar strings with pincers and emitting bloodcurdling noise from primitive loudspeakers.When Mr. Tomasín’s father, Jorge Tomasín, approached the band after the show, they were resigned to never seeing Miguel again, sure his father would disapprove.“‘Lads, I didn’t understand a lot of what you played,” Roberto Conlazo recalled the father saying, “‘but I saw Miguel very happy. So go right ahead.’”Those words were a green light for the ensuing three decades of creativity that has produced around 120 albums, American and European tours, and collaborations with some of the world’s most respected experimental musicians. Reynols splits proceeds from shows and music sales equally, making Mr. Tomasín one of the few professional musicians with Down syndrome in the world.The band first came to broad national attention with the afternoon TV gig. A popular host, Dr. Mario Socolinsky, had interviewed Reynols on his daytime program, “Good Afternoon Health,” in which he gave health tips. Impressed with Mr. Tomasín’s integration into the band, he invited them to be the show’s house musicians, giving Reynols an unlikely job of playing to a mainstream audience five times a week for a year.Reynols’s next break came in 2001, when Mr. Courtis and Roberto Conlazo went on the band’s first U.S. tour. Although Mr. Tomasín decided not to join them, the tour introduced his work to the global underground music network that has supported the band’s subsequent career.Mr. Tomasín playing guitar during a concert.Juan Mario Tomasín, left, Miguel’s brother, and his bandmate Patricio Conlazo after a rehearsal.In the following years, the band’s focus on improvisation drove its extraordinary output of albums. Because each jam session with Mr. Tomasín could result in a different sound, the band has released dozens of them as albums on small record labels in runs of a few hundred copies.After seeing Mr. Tomasín’s performance on TV, families across Argentina started contacting the band, asking them to teach music to their children with disabilities. That led Mr. Courtis and Roberto and Patricio Conlazo to create a collective, called Sol Mayor, which brought together people with various physical and developmental disabilities to play music.Their approach, they believe, puts a spotlight on the beauty of music that does not follow Western norms, like playing in an octave scale.Inspired by work with Reynols, other musicians have started bands for people with disabilities in Norway and France.“We make music so that people enjoy it,” Mr. Tomasín said. Music is “the best, magical,” he added.Mr. Tomasín in his bedroom at his brother’s family home in Rio Gallegos.Mr. Tomasín’s family say they were able to give him the support to develop his creativity thanks in part to their relatively well-off economic position, acknowledging the social inequalities that prevent many people with disabilities from reaching their potential.At a recent sold-out Reynols concert in Buenos Aires, Mr. Tomasín sang and played all the instruments on the stage in front of 600 fans, posing for selfies with admirers after the show.Earlier this year, Mr. Tomasín moved from Buenos Aires to Rio Gallegos to live with his brother Juan Mario, a former Army officer who now teaches English. In the afternoons, Mr. Tomasín dances to Argentine folk music, cooks and gardens at a local center for people with disabilities, often wearing his favorite Reynols T-shirt.Mr. Tomasín’s bandmates say one of his greatest gifts is helping people become better versions of themselves without even being aware of his influence.“He teaches without teaching, by simply enjoying his life,” Roberto Conlazo said.Mr. Tomasín’s big plan for the near future is to stage a concert in his new town, bringing his bandmates from Buenos Aires, 1,600 miles away, and inviting his new friends.“Let them come to my school,” he said, “so we can all play together.”Mr. Tomasín participating in a folk dance class at the René Vargas Day Center in Rio Gallegos.Hisako Ueno More

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      in Movies

      ‘Argentina, 1985’ Review: All the Prosecutor’s Men

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      Santiago Mitre’s impassioned dramatization of the Trial of the Juntas benefits from a gentle evocation of collective memory.Like a pair of old wingtips polished with wax, “Argentina, 1985” spins a notable piece of history into an impassioned courtroom drama flecked with quaint humor. The movie centers on the Trial of the Juntas, a milestone Argentine case in which a civilian court tried former military leaders for brutal crimes committed while the country was under a right-wing dictatorship.The director, Santiago Mitre, finds a flinty protagonist in the chief prosecutor, Julio Strassera, who assumed the role during the early days of Argentina’s precarious reinstalled democracy. Mitre sketches Strassera (Ricardo Darín) as a scoffing sourpuss whose fidelity to his work strains against an enduring mistrust of others. He softens in domestic scenes, where the genial presence of his wife and two children uncover both the dangerous stakes of the case — the family receives death threats — and Strassera’s caring side.Unspooling patiently, the film makes frequent use of a montage effect to abridge months of historical detail, layering brief moments, reenacted archival footage (shot with the pneumatic cameras and lenses of the period) and original television coverage to paint a sprawling picture of Strassera and his team’s efforts. Mitre sometimes spotlights a single story within these composite sequences; for instance, one woman’s distressing account of giving birth while captive bookends a collage of court testimonies. (More than 800 witnesses testified in the actual trial.)These stylings evoke a gentle sense of collective memory that compensates for the film’s more grandiose moments, including Strassera’s overwrought final address. Cinema prizes a good man making history, but this story’s heroes are manifold.Argentina, 1985Rated R for political thrills. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Television

      ‘Break It All’ Celebrates the Oppositional Energy of Latin Rock

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Break It All’ Celebrates the Oppositional Energy of Latin RockA new six-part Netflix series explores half a century of music under pressure.Soda Stereo onstage in 1984. The band is one of many featured in “Break It All,” a six-part documentary series on Netflix.Credit…NetflixDec. 16, 2020, 4:33 p.m. ETLatin America has taken rock seriously. Seriously enough for governments to suppress it. Seriously enough for bands to sing about political issues, societal troubles and the spirit of rebellion. Seriously enough for fans to risk arrests and beatings to see a concert. While Latin rock can be thoroughly entertaining — catchy, playful, rambunctious, over the top — it rarely settles for being mere entertainment. There’s often far more going on behind the melody, rhythm and noise.“Break It All,” a six-part documentary series named after a song by Los Shakers that arrives Wednesday on Netflix, hurtles through the history of rock in Latin America, from the 1950s — when Ritchie Valens, a Mexican-American born in California, turned the traditional Mexican song “La Bamba” into an American rock ’n’ roll cornerstone — to the 21st century.“Rock ’n’ roll is a form of communication,” Àlex Lora, of the blunt and boisterous Mexican hard-rock band El Tri, says in the documentary. “And it would be illogical, since there are millions of people who speak the language of Cervantes, if we didn’t have our own rock ’n’ roll.”[embedded content]The documentary is narrated by the artists themselves, speaking about both their music and the times they lived through. There are glimpses, and often considerably more, of nearly every major Latin rock figure of the last half-century. The names of bands and performers rush by, many of them probably unfamiliar to listeners in the United States. For those who want a second listen, the documentary makers compiled a companion playlist on Spotify under its Spanish title, “Rompan Todo.”A prime mover and executive producer for “Break It All,” as well as one of its onscreen musician-historians, is Gustavo Santaolalla, who has won two Academy Awards for his film scores and has produced albums for rockers across Latin America, winning a dozen Latin Grammy Awards. His own group, Bajofondo — which mixes tango, rock, orchestral arrangements, electronics and even a bit of disco — is nominated for a Grammy this year in the Latin rock or alternative album category.“I believe the future of rock resides in women and in the third world,” said Gustavo Santaolalla.Credit…NetflixAs “Break It All” moves through the decades, it juxtaposes exuberant songs and concerts with contemporaneous images of dictatorships, coups, uprisings and crises. Musician after musician defines rock as “freedom.”“I had this idea forever,” Santaolalla said in a video interview from his home in Los Angeles. “I wanted to tell this story against the background of the sociopolitical ambience of the time. Even musicians that are part of the story don’t make this connection easily. But when you start to dig in and look at the big picture, you realize how similar the situations were, how the same things happened in many countries.”During his younger days as a longhaired rock musician, Santaolalla himself was arrested and jailed multiple times in Buenos Aires — though never, he recalled, for more than three days. “Rock is not associated with any political party,” he said. “It doesn’t hold a political flag. But nevertheless we were enemies of the state.”Latin rock, also known as rock en español or Latin alternative, evolved with eyes and ears on English-language rock. There’s Latin blues-rock, Latin psychedelia, Latin metal, Latin new wave; throughout the series, Latin rockers cite their American and British counterparts. So in some ways “Break It All” shows a Spanish-speaking parallel universe to the history of rock in the United States and England, particularly in its early years.“We wanted to have self-expression — music that was crafted by us, that talked about our daily life,” said Rubén Albarrán, the lead singer of Café Tacvba.Credit…NetflixIn the 1950s, bands like Los Locos del Ritmo and Los Teen Tops translated American rock ’n’ roll songs into Mexican slang; in the 1960s, bands like Los Shakers vied to sound like the Beatles.“In our early, early, early years, when we were little kids, we were trying to be like the Beatles and sing in English,” Santaolalla said. “And then we realized, no, we have to sing in our language. And we have to play in our own language.”The best Latin rockers have infused imported sounds with local legacies, moving beyond imitation to innovation — bands like Soda Stereo from Argentina, Aterciopelados from Colombia and Café Tacvba from Mexico. Along with all they learned from rock, those bands and others draw on tango, ranchera, cumbia and numerous other homegrown styles, creating hybrids that resonate with and ricochet off cultural memories.“We wanted to have self-expression — music that was crafted by us, that talked about our daily life,” Rubén Albarrán, the lead singer of Café Tacvba, said via video interview from his home in Mexico City. “We put the energy of rock music behind the concept of being inquieto,” which translates as restless, worried or uneasy. “To be moving all the time, and to break away from the rules of our society.”“Break It All” hops from country to country, more or less chronologically, but concentrates on Mexico and Argentina. “There’s great music in all the region, but I like to think of those countries as a battery,” Santaolalla said. “One pole is Mexico and the other is Argentina, the north and the south. Mexico is closer to the U.S., and Argentina is closer to Britain in terms of sound and perspective.”Maldita Vecindad onstage in 1987.Credit…NetflixThe documentary traces cycles of expansion, suppression and rebound, of growing ambitions and widening connections. Under dictatorships, rock was at times forced underground. In Argentina, after the singer Billy Bond incited an arena crowd to “break it all” and the audience smashed seats, rock disappeared from television and radio; recording projects had to be submitted to government committees. In Mexico, the country’s rockers were vilified for more than a decade — and shut out of mainstream performing spaces — after a 1971 festival modeled on Woodstock, Avándaro, where the band Peace and Love declaimed songs like “Marihuana” and “We Got the Power” and used obscenities during a live radio broadcast that was immediately cut off.But musicians persisted, and audiences supported them. Mexican rock started to resurface when radio stations were playing Spanish-language rock from other countries and Mexican labels wanted their own share of the market. Argentine rock got an unlikely boost when, after Britain won the Falklands War in 1982, rock in English was banned from Argentina’s airwaves.The arrival of MTV Latin America in 1993 brought a new, border-crossing solidarity to Latin rock. Musicians became more aware of kindred spirits abroad; they realized that they weren’t struggling alone. Individual or national missions began to feel like a movement. And they had plenty of targets: authoritarian governments, economic turmoil. The music continued to cross-pollinate — with electronics and hip-hop — and it began, though belatedly, to recognize women’s ideas and voices.Latin rock never broke the language barrier to reach English-speaking audience in the United States; that current commercial breakthrough belongs to reggaeton and the vaguer Latin genre called urbano, both drawing primarily on hip-hop and reggae.“In my 50 years in this, I’ve heard the phrase ‘rock is dead,’ ‘rock is finished,’ so many times,” Santaolalla said. “When we started the series three years ago, I said rock is in hibernation. But now I say rock is in quarantine. I believe the future of rock resides in women and in the third world — they are going to be the pillars of rock. They are going to bring the vaccine.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More