Rating: 3/5
Hooptober 9.0 | 32/34 | Bonus 1/3
Madrid 1937, Spanish Civil War
Two clowns — a Funny Clown and a Sad Clown — perform a routine while an air raid occurs, keeping the kids laughing instead of being afraid.
The Republican Militia walks in, demanding the circus workers fight for them against the fascist Nationalist rebellion.
A clown with a machete. You'll scare the shit out of them.
The Funny Clown slaughters dozens. The Nationalists capture him and send him to the Valley of the Fallen. His son, Javier, tries to free him, but Colonel Salcedo kills him.
Madrid 1973
Franco’s Nationists won the war and, as of 1973, remained in power.
Javier has become a sad clown, following his father’s wishes. His funny clown is Sergio, a violent and crude person he despises.
Javier falls for a trapezist named Natalia, but she is already involved with Sergio. Javier watches Sergio repeatedly beat up and verbally abuse Natalia, leaving her passed out and bloody in a diner.
Sergio is a passionate sex partner, leading to a “hilarious” misunderstanding where Javier overhears and thinks Sergio is beating her again.
Natalia doesn’t care about loyalty and will hook up with Javier, even if it puts them in danger. She gets off on that.
What Natalia admires most about Javier is that he refuses to laugh at Sergio’s gross jokes. Others are too afraid and laugh out of fear.
Sergio catches them at a carnival and hospitalizes Javier. In a vision, he sees his father’s throat slit, sending him into a rage. Then, an angel appears, christening him an angel of death.
From here, the film is a gore fest as Javier mutilates his face into a permanent clown mask and goes on a killing spree.
** Half-Baked Interpretation / Spoilers **
Álex de la Iglesia is engaging with his country’s complicated history. He makes the characters not just victims of their circumstances but representatives of the country’s violent past.
Early in the film, the clowns entertain children. Humor and sadness coexisted. Once the Spanish Civil War began, the clown lost its innocence.
Later, as the clowns mutilate each other, they lose their distinctions, and both become too horrifying to entertain children. In one scene, Javier runs into a theater to see Raphael on screen, dressed as a clown, mourning the past that is lost. Crying, Javier realizes the same.
It also seems that neither Javier nor Sergio wanted to be clowns. Javier became a clown to fulfill his father’s wishes. Sergio became one to hide his identity from the police. When Javier is driven to kill, ultimately, it is the image of his father that propels him forward.
Natalia is Spain, and Sergio is the Nationalist government — possessing and abusing her, fooling her into believing that he has what she wants. Javier’s earnest charm wins her over initially, but as Sergio continues to beat her, Javier becomes just another clown using violence to possess what he wants. When he dons the bishop’s robe, perhaps he is the Catholic church, who became complicit with Franco’s nationalism.
The Valley of the Fallen bookends the movie. It is the place where the Nationalists sent Republicans as slave labor to build it and the site that Javier and Sergio scale during the finale.
The site was also where they buried Franco. Years after this movie, the government exhumed his body and buried it in a municipal graveyard.
As both scale the monument to claim Natalia, she falls to her death. Neither got what they desired.
History is, of course, not that simple, and I am an idiot. So, take my ramblings with a grain of salt.