The Bar: The Absurdity Of Human Nature

The last two films directed by filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia from Bilbao premiered at almost the same time. The Bar and Perfect Strangers premiered in 2017, though they had a very different effect. While the former had modest visitor numbers, the latter became the director’s best-selling film.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the plot behind Perfect Strangers (a remake of the Italian film Perfetti sconosciuti ) was much more attractive to the audience than The Bar , which is a much more peculiar film.

The course of insane events is fascinating most of the time, but also becomes really absurd. Personally, I think The Bar is an enjoyable, entertaining movie with a pretty attractive plot. But it can be tiring, and is a film that failed to shine through among the filmmakers’ other films. It’s just more of the same.

The plot

The film begins on a normal morning with a group of people in Madrid having breakfast at a bar. Some of the people know each other while others are strangers. Suddenly the routine is interrupted by tragedy: A person is shot and killed outside the bar. This chaos disappears, the city seems deserted, and this group of characters is trapped inside the bar.

The Bar has an interesting plot and portrays the characters in an interesting way, as if they were a reflection of society. De la Iglesia manages to capture the truth behind the mask, the nature we hide behind the roles we play in society.

The bar: A non-place

The bar we see in the movie is a bar like any other. There is nothing special about it. It is the local bar where people in the surrounding areas eat breakfast every morning. Or people who, like Elena, will never go in there again. In the familiar, confined space, the film’s characters seem relatable.

The French anthropologist Marc Augé has invented the word “non-place”. But what is a “non-place”? It is a temporary place where identity does not manifest itself. Augé identifies highways, hotel rooms, planes, etc. as non-locations.

These are places where people find themselves over a short period of time where they are unlikely to interact with others and are unlikely to build any meaningful relationships with others.

A non-place is the opposite of an anthropological place where identity is located. Non-places are transient. They are spaces that plague modern society. Whether a particular space is a non-place is subjective. It depends on what the particular place means to a particular individual.

Bar decor

This bar is a non-place within the confines of a city that is always on the move. It is also a place that provides anonymity to many, and shelter to others. At the bar we meet Elena. She is a young woman who only came into the bar to charge her phone. Then there is Trini, a customer who comes every day to play on the slot machine.

Elena and Trini are not the only people trapped in this small space. A total of 8 characters are captured. Álex de la Iglesia has shown his ability to create a sense of claustrophobia in his previous films. He often catches people in places where they face extreme situations. For example, in  Common Wealth or in My Big Night .

A group of people representing a sample of society

The Bar is a good representation of modern Spain. The eight characters are very different: There is a homeless person, a young but extremely insecure young woman, a middle-aged, ordinary woman with gambling addiction problems, a young hipster, a former policeman who was fired from the police because of alcoholism, among other.

As the situation becomes more desperate, these people show their true selves. The Spanish philosopher Eugenio Trías addressed these issues in his work Philosophy and Carnival.

For Trías , we act according to conventions, to adapt to the roles that society itself has imposed on us. But we have multiple roles and do not do the same thing in all situations. We do not project the same image all the time.

This is exactly what we value most about the film. For example, we see that Elena does not behave in the same way when she talks to her friend on the phone as she does when she walks into the bar. In the same way, all the characters have a certain duality: the image they project, and the secrets they hide from others.

The masks smoke off in The Bar

This masked dance is a reflection of our world, of the bars we visit daily, and also of the modern cities where personalities multiply rapidly. Interestingly, the character whose identity remains most stable at all times, Israel, is the homeless man.

In particular, Israel does not seem to belong to the same world as the other persons. He is a man who has experienced many problems and yet he never tries to deceive us.

As the situation becomes desperate, all individuals struggle for their individual survival. In the middle of this, the philosophy of “every man for himself” prevails, and the masks fall off. This reflects the hypocrisy that surrounds our world.

Israel, however, has no mask to take off, or at least he does so to a lesser degree. Why? Simply because Israel does not strive to please anyone. He never tries to project another image of who he is.

Conclusion

Are the people we exclude from society the most authentic among us? Israel is already in a desperate situation – he is already fighting every day for his survival. For that reason, he is a pariah in society and therefore does not wear a mask.

By mixing the eschatological, the comic and the tragic, The Bar makes us see people in the most raw light. The Bar  presents a situation where survival reigns over moral and social norms. When people take off their masks, we see their worst facets.