In the dark room, Los Planetas band members lay down tracks for their new album. That brief shot conveys more than the mere disarray of the space. Those probably ruined discs indicate that they are anarchic towards music contained within its packaged and sellable form. For them, music matters when it is pouring out of their not so inner wounds and taking shape with drugs involved and a tangle of other forces around them. This is where their songs grow amidst chaos which is both visible and hidden inside them.
The astonishing achievement by directors Isaki Lacuesta and Pol Rodríguez’s “Saturn Return” lies in how it visually manifests this linked creative turmoil and personal chaos with manic visual energy and formal audacity, refusing to succumb to any subgenre cliché. Out of this intoxicating artistic spirit comes one of the most truthful and rejuvenating music biopics in years an unapologetic presentation on deeply flawed individuals that immerses spectators into their self-destructive, poetic yet ultimately redemptive struggle against themselves.
While there are brushes with the fantastical in their work, the scriptwriters don’t let the characters fly away into the sky where they may be in danger. It’s linear to a fault in that it takes you from a time of great fiction to recording sessions in New York City during the late 1990s; however, “Saturn” is no origin story at all. Maybe bringing some background knowledge would make your experience richer but coming here without ever knowing who Los Planetas were will not affect how its atmosphere sucks you up.
Saturn is pieced together from Vignettes where the sentences are seemingly unrelated, so much so that it loses its meaning. The group’s song “500 pieces” forms the basis of this album. This is a narrative composed of loosely connected and vividly portrayed scenes that takes a dramatic form. “Saturn” is about 10 years in the past, when three friends became members of an indie-rock band and produced two albums together. They must come up with another good one or else they will be dropped by their label; The film’s title is “Segundo premio,” which stands for the most important track on their third lap, “Una seaman an el motor de un autobus.”
Immediately, Ibáñez is not mentioned across the credit lines, he is referred to as The Singer (Daniel Ibáñez who can be found in “The Good Boss” alongside Javier Bardem) and Cristalino played The Guitarist (the character played by a real musician whose stage name is Cristalino). He chooses to wear sunglasses and acts disinterested and unemotional. On the other hand, his fragile mind beneath the surface is exposed through the erratic behavior of this guitarist who has an addiction to heroin. For them it was new grounds, both Ibáñez and Cristalino have never acted before. Their bond on set doesn’t involve much touch or talk. There are almost invisible walls that separate them making it impossible to figure out what they want from each other in this partnership. Their performances oscillate between authenticity and unavoidable Rockstar indifference inherent in their characters.
To bridge the gap between unspoken thoughts that each of them have, Lacuesta and co-writer Fernando Navarro employ voiceover narration in the early frames of their joint film. Though not one source, this element is made up by all key characters sharing opinions on the duo’s love-and-hate bromance. Most illuminatingly among them is May (Stéphanie Magnin), who has a proper name and is one of three core characters; the other two members are portrayed as being former bass players for Los Planetas at which point the story takes off. She tells how both Singer and Guitarist represent Granada unmistakable to anyone who knows anything about it. This may not be easily understood by people from different countries apart from Spain, but anyone can grasp the notion that a band can mirror some unique city peculiarities they have grown up alongside while becoming artists themselves.
It is clear from her perspective as a woman who has been romantically linked with both of them at the same time, that these men have an inability (contrary to women) to talk about their feelings unless they are hidden in sorrowful songs. Subsequently, lyrics appear on the screen as tracks emerge out of the cloudy darkness through which it evolves not only in subtitles but also in original Spanish as if the film makers had created a sing-along motion picture. The voice-over narration begins by saying sorry that these re-enacted events occurred during the 20th century and belonged to another era which was not similar to our modern life. These different perspectives recognize that some versions of these events might contain lies a playful self-consciousness of every element of the movie, from Takuro Takeuchi’s moving camera angles to editing done chronologically yet still fluidly linking moments together.
The verses of their compositions are the only way we understand what Singer and Guitarist, about whom we don’t know much concerning their past, reveal. They stand close enough to each other to have a lot of things to say to one another but just after this as if by magic their mouths get glued together. Their brotherhood thrives on the intensity of their individuality and the pain they carry with them for reasons that remain unknown to us it seems as if all they know how to do is keep hurting each other because that’s the only way they seem capable of expressing love.
There is an image near the end that sums everything up so beautifully; you’ll remember it always when you think of “Saturn Return.” The ghostly shapes of these two men appear almost simultaneously, one upon another, symbolizing the idea that friendship means one shared spirit in two bodies. There is no hugging or talking at all, but in that single frame, the directors echo this sentiment stating that any music they made was only possible because they made it for themselves, every song serving as a sonic expression of their mutual perverted often toxic passion for each other.
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