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| "I wish I were always like Aragorn" Back in Argentina, where he spent his childhood, the actor toured the town, watched some soccer, horse races and talked about his experience filming the last part of The Lord Of The Rings. The man has very similarities to Aragorn, son of Arathorn, heir of Isildur, king of Arnor and Gondor, Captain of the Dunedain of the North, at least as it shows the ambicious filmic version of Peter Jackson of the trilogy of Lord Of The Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Some differences, however, are easy to see. The first, is his looks: his hair much shorter and a bit greyish, the abscence of a beard and the clothes, a black and grey suit and shirt with a style nearer to an elegant European desiner's than to a Middle Earth look. The second, well, our Aragorn comes in with a San Lorenzo (Argentinian soccer team) flag under his arm, and inside his bag brings a mate, termo and a package of yerba. Rosamonte, of course, king's yerba. (Things to prepare Mate, a typical beverage of Uruguay, very common in Argentina) It's Monday morning and Viggo Mortensen has spent all Sunday traveling between Buenos Aires (capital city) and Santa Fe, where he went to see the match between San Lorenzo and Colón (another soccer team), which ended 1-1 maybe more known by his prescence than by what happened in the game. For him, at least, it was a dream come true. "When I was a kid, I always liked San Lorenzo, but I'd never actually been to a game" he says in that kind of whispered porteño (from Buenos Aires) Spanish of his "It was very interesting. There weren't as many San Lorenzo fans, actually. I thought there'd be more. But they still yelled loud." It's weird you didn't go to see the Superclasic (a match between the two most important soccer teams)... I had tickets and all, but I wanted to see San Lorenzo. When I knew I was coming to Argentina I wanted to know where they were playing, and I was told "they're playing far away". "Where?", I askd. And they said in Santa Fe. "Can't we go there?". So a few of us went in a van. The flag has his story. Viggo stopped at a hotel in Paraná and before the game, he went to visit San Lorenzo's players. "It was a dream meeting them, they're very kind. We took some pictures with Beto (talking about Beto Acosta, one of the players), and they gave me the flag and t-shirts and stuff", he says proudly. Viggo is a long talker, and when it comes to stories of his own, they tend to be very detailed and accurate. "The night before I went, I realised I had nothing to give to them" he says "So we went out on Saturday midnight looking for libraries where they sold the LotR trilogy. In the end, we got books for everyone". With his low profile - not much recognizable without his Aragorn looks -, Viggo has been in Argentina since Saturday. The actor - born in the US, with danish father and American mother -, lived in Buenos Aires (with a short stay in Chaco) between the age of 3 and 11 while his father worked as a crop farmer, among others. He left the country in 1969 (he's 45), and since then, he's come back only a couple of times. "I arrived pretty tired from Brazil on Saturday, but instead of taking a nap, I walked around, by Recoleta (very touristic zone of the city). It was raining a bit, I went by the cementery, the Art Museum, I walked around those areas. It's different than I remembered as a child. I don't know. The parks, the avenues: It all looks much smaller than I remembered. That hill in the park, I remembered it as a mountain." How does it feel to be back in Buenos Aires? I know things aren't going much good in the past two years. And yes, there's more poorness, but there also was in that time. The thing is, this zone is well taken care of. I'm stuck here, in a beautiful hotel, in an expensive zone, and everything seems ok. But if you go out to the streets a bit you realise it's not that good. But you can see as much poorness in Argentina as in Brasil or the US. Recently, I had to stay 3 more days in Washington because I couldn't go back to California because of the fires. And in the center of the capital city of the most powerful country of the world you can see people sleeping in the streets. Will you be able to go to Chaco in such a short time? No, but when we went to Paraná, the trip North made me remember Chaco a bit. It's not the same, but I was shocked to see the country side. I learned horseback riding in Chaco. This habilities were very useful to Viggo during the year and a half he spent in New Zealand filming LotR. Even though he had to learn to use swords and other things for his character, Aragorn, knowing horseback riding was a big advantage. What he couldn't teach his cast mates was to appreciate sugarless mate. "They don't like it very much " he says "Maybe sweet yes, a bit. They're curious and wonder if it has some secondary effect, but it's hard for them to have it sugarless". Even if most of the movie was filmed two years ago, Mortensen spent many months there in 2003 filming new scenes and improving some others to complete the third part of the trilogy, The Return Of The King, to be known worldwide on December 17th, coming out in Argentina on January 1st, 2004. "The two first movies were so successfull that New Line gave us some more money to retouch some things and add some other. We filmed much this time", he says, and talks about the improved scenes. "However, I still couldn't see how the movie ended up" he adds "I only saw some parts, and I think it's going to be just as Jackson said: it's got the best of the first and second. He says this one's the best of all three. I hope he's right". Viggo is not only an actor, you can define him almost as a multifacetic artist with different ways to express himself: he's got photo books, poetry books, experimental rock albums, drawings, and paintings. He is also part of Bush's government. Do you feel freeer in other arts, where you're not told what to do by a director? The difference is that the final result, good or not, is mine. In movies, the director does the final work. But I think it's similar, the effort is pretty much the same. You use different muscles, different parts of your brain. Writing, painting, going out with a camera, it's all the same. This implies asking yourself questions, trying to connect yourself with the world, making an effort to see what you've got in common with other people. That's the hope of humanity: finding what similarities we have. And arts are useful for that. Did that identify you as Aragorn, someone who, according to Tolkien, also puts much hope in man kind? What I have in common with him is the curiosity, that wish of sharing, learning. I wish I was like Aragorn all the time. Sometimes you're tired, frustrated, you don't want to listen. Aragorn isn't perfect, and that's what I like about this story. People in Japan or in Argentina can identify themselves with the characters of this strange world because its heroes -and there are many, not just one- have flaws, moments of doubt and fear, but in spite of that, they show compassion, they care about how others are, about the consequences of their actions. I wish there were more leaders like Aragorn. It's a bit frustrating comparing him to the US leader nowadays... But people comes to realise. There's a big difference between what people think and what the media says about Bush. The people isn't silly in the US either. The world thinks Americans are stupid because they don't vote. But actually, they're smart, and that's why they don't vote: Because they know they won't change anything like that. What's got to be done is changing the voting system. Campaigns are bought, presidents, governors. They are bought and have to do what they are told. And now theres Shwarzennegger's case Terrible, they put him a presidential machine. He looked like a champion before even starting. His star prescence, the publicity. It was awesome. He didn't have to say a thing, he didn't offer any idea. He just stood next to any candidate and the other one looked like a ghost. I'm a bit afraid he won. I think for common people, for workers, life is going to be much worse. Because those supporting him, like Bush and his friends, are like pigs, eating all they can. And so, Viggo says goodbye. The San Lorenzo flag stays there, hanging from the movie poster, like a cap Aragorn is wearing in his trip back to the conquer of the throne of Gondor. |
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| That hill in the park, I remembered it as a mountain. |
| QUOTE (Ryvyan @ Dec 5 2003, 01:03 PM) | ||
Thanks Flower for translating that :D God, I love the way he dares to speak whatever comes to his mind, especially the Arnold Schwagger (sp?) thing, which I thought was totally mad too!
Heh, just got to say 'ditto!' |