The Good Boss, Spain’s contender for this year’s best international feature Oscar, is a social satire, part workplace comedy, part dark drama, starring Javier Bardem as Blanco, the patriarchal boss of a scales manufacturing company who takes an inappropriate interest in his employee’s personal lives. This is Bardem’s third film with Spanish director Fernando León de Aranoa but their first comedy together.
“It was something new for both of us,” Aranoa told THR Presents, powered by Vision Media. “We were looking for a kind of balance, to have the strongest, darkest drama alongside the brightest, broadest humor.”
The rare comedic role for Bardem, who won a best supporting Oscar in 2008 for No Country for Old Men and is an acting contender this year for his turn as Desi Arnaz in Being the Ricardos.
“This was a completely different thing,” said Bardem. “Doing Desi Arnaz, I had to really get into his shoes, [study] every detail of him. Here, it’s a fictional character, and I got different bit from different people, some real, some I’ve heard about or seen on TV. A person from a bar or a driver I know. We put things together and see if it matches what [Aranoa] is thinking.”
One thing they agreed on early was the hair. Bardem made cinematic follicular history with his spectacular bowl cut in No Country for Old Men. In The Good Boss, he sports an impressive silver mane, as pompous as Blanco himself.
“The hair? I think the hair speaks for itself, it speaks volumes,” said Bardem, chuckling. While the gray hair gives Blanco an air of authority, “the style tells us he’s a little off-key, that he’s not really with the times.”
Blanco’s hair almost “tells the story of the character himself,” noted Aranoa. “By the end [like the boss] it’s almost ruined.”
Underneath the broad comedy, The Good Boss is a sharp satire of modern-day capitalism and bosses’ subtle, and often not so subtle, exploitation of their workers.
“I’m interested in labor relationships, and what happens in the workplaces nowadays,” Aranoa explained. “It’s not only about the owner of the factory being tough with [workers], but it’s also about the lack of no any kind of solidarity between them, there is no working class identity. … So when one of them gets fired, and he’s in front of the factory, he’s all alone.”
“We all have our little section of power and we can really abuse that power, unconsciously even,” said Bardem. “Most of the times, this abuse is accepted because the person is fun, or charming, and you feel he really cares. And then you realize that person has invaded your personal space, and is taking a lot out of you. That happens everywhere. In the film industry the biggest example was Harvey Weinstein. [I worked] with Harvey in a movie and I saw him closely, and you can tell he [could be| very charming and fun. And then you realize that attracts lots of people, and he will do his horrible things.”
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Source: HollyWood
