‘Gordon,’ a Big Netflix Series From Argentina, Unpacked by Pablo Trapero and Star Rodrigo de la Serna

A Netflix Nov. 18 bow, Pablo Trapero’s “Gordon,” led by “Money Heist” star Rodrigo de la Serna, weighs in and is shaping up as Argentina’s series of the year.

Set over 1970-76 and shot over seven months with large cinematographic ambition by two of Argentina’s greatest directors, Trapero (“Leonera,” “The Clan”) and Pablo Fendrik (“The Bronze Garden,” “Amongst Men”), “Gordon” lifts the lid on the real-life Ánibal Gordon – an infamous torturer, psychopath and sybarite of violence – and through him Argentina’s biggest horror story, its 1974-83 Dirty War.

If periods of terror can have its icons, one of the War’s was Gordon who acts like a “sci-fi portal, opening doors to Argentina’s different universes of the time,” says Trapero.

“Gordon,” a seven-part period psychological action thriller, marks the return of Trapero to his native Argentina after eight years. Unlike the famed international series he has co-directed of late, such as “ZeroZeroZero,” here Trapero also co-writes, with Marcos Osorio Vidal, a sign of his artistic investment in “Gordon.”

It’s also a return to the near same time period and film noir-melodrama mix of 2016’s “The Clan,” Trapero’s best festival and commercial hit, a portrait of Argentina’s well-to-do Puccio family which kidnapped and murdered associates for money. Winning a best director Venice Silver Lion, “The Clan” went on to gross $20.4 million worldwide, rating as a blockbuster in Argentina.

Hypnotic and nightmarish, “Gordon” first captures its protagonist, played memorably by De la Serna, in a car with his wife and infant son crossing Argentina’s huge grassy Pampa plain to a new home.He courteously greets an old man steering a cart and horse they pass, takes in a wounded puppy and later sipping tea from a porcelain teacup with a new neighbor, Dora, the widow of a Vice-Admiral.

“You look like you have a military bearing. Were you in service?” Dora asks at the start of a series’ trailer. “No, no, I’m a simple businessman,” Gordon answers, but is obviously flattered.

His gentlemanly charm is also, however, a mask. Cut in the trailer to Gordon and a gang checking revolvers for a robbery, then a torched getaway car aflame after a heist and Gordon being rowed across a lake in the spectacular scenery of Patagonia to pull off another job.

Settling in at his new home, Gordon, a dandy, soon builds a secret passageway in his new home to escape from his house and spy on his own family, adopting the self-assumed airs of a quietly dashing domestic James Bond.

In real life, Gordon joined Argentina’s military intelligence services as a secret agent in 1968, became a leader of pre-Junta dictatorship Triple A death squads, then, from May to November 1976, director of Automotores Orletti, one of the regime’s most heinous subversive detention and torture centers.

How such a monster as Gordon, a car thief in his youth, scaled the ladder of power in 1970s’ Argentina is one of the most pertinent questions the Netflix series seeks to explain.

“Gordon” is produced by Adrián Suar, a driving force in Argentine film-TV as an actor, producer at Pol-ka Producciones (“Son of the Bride,” “Violetta”) and former Canal 13 programmer. Suar produces “Gordon” with Diego Andraznik his partner at their new production house, Preludio Producciones.

Trapero and De la Serna unpacked “Gordon” in the buildup to its Netflix release on Nov. 18, when it is sure to make an impact.

Part of the attraction of classic crime shows is that the forces of order trap the criminal and explain their criminality. Part of the fascination of “Gordon’’ is that he becomes part of the forces of order….

Pablo Trapero: The idea of “Gordon” was to begin with fiction with real events providing their context. Gordon carries the story from beginning to end. He’s like a sci-fi portal , opening doors to Argentina’s different universes of the time. So the most difficult and highly attractive challenge was to make viewers want to watch more about a villain who becomes ever more villainous, for the audience to feel ever more emotion and commitment to the series.

Rodrigo de la Serna: What’s interesting about Gordon is that he’s the only character who doesn’t have an ideology nor doctrine in a context of a Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Republic where Peronism positions itself as a third option – neither capitalism to one extreme and Marxism to the other.

So what drove him?

De la Serna: Gordon is a mercenary whose only interest was to be able to make money and experience the pleasure of exercising his true psychopathological essence. The national and international context allowed psychopaths of the magnitude of Gordon to reach places of power, make them their own, take off their masks and become the true monsters they are. It was much easier during these years.

Trapero: What we suggest is that during these years, and not just in Argentina, the relationship with violence and the value of human life appeared to change. For Gordon and almost the period, violence became a commodity, without the gravity and consequences which violence really has.

De la Serna: From 1955, when Argentina’s Navy bombed the Plaza de Maya, killing 400 people, to oust Perón from power, from this foundational act, the country’s rule of law is replaced by the rule of violence. It begins to be politically legitimate to kidnap and kill people and as Pablo says, violence becomes a commodity. People like Gordon can take off their masks and be the monster they have inside.

Pablo, you wrote “Gordon” with Marcos Osorio Vidal, based on the novel by Marcelo Larraquy. How did you attempt to structure the series?

Trapero: With the screenplay and in direction, we attempted to change genre from one episode to another so that viewers could follow the story via familiar cinema codes. Episode 1 is like a Western, where a stranger arrives and has to carve out his place, Episode 2 like a secret agent investigative thriller. Without giving spoilers, the last episode nears horror, with beats you can find in the genre. This renews the series’ interest, not only because of Gordon’s story but Argentina’s.

To what extent could Gordon be seen as a return to the world and the mix of film noir and melodrama of “The Clan”?

Trapero: I’m really a fan noir, a great genre, and melodrama, and here there’s a mix of these two so classic genres where viewers see things that are really dramatic but from a narrative point of view this makes viewing easier despite the subject. And it’s interesting you mention “The Clan.” It was a breakout which made me rethink many things. So much so that I began to make series from then on because, paradoxically, “The Clan” was a hit. I was left, however, with the sensation that I wanted to talk a lot more about this world and that the length of a film wasn’t sufficient, what was needed by the story and the characters.

And Gordon offered a kind of return?

Trapero: With time I understood that “Gordon” was in a way a revenge, allowing me to return to a similar period, tone and universe, with more time for us and for viewers, to contradict our own sentiments, which is what I think is happening when people watch “Gordon.” In one episode, they feel something about an issue and in another the opposite. In one episode, viewers are annoyed, in anther react in a more relaxed fashion.

Rodrigo has delivered a magnificente performance in the sense of fascinating an audience – as we’re beginning to see is the case – with a story which asks so much of viewers. Rather like with “The Clan,” the paths sometimes recommended to attract audiences aren’t those of “Gordon.”

Could you give an example?

Trapero: If something was predictable, we tried going the other way, to see how it worked. In this sense the work of Rodrigo is extraordinary, how he gets viewers to follow Gordon. And the rest of the cast as well. Because it’s a story which depends a lot on an audience identifying with a tale which is foreign to them. There’s not one character in the series from beginning to end with whom you ca feel identified with, how they conceive the world. Perhaps a little bit with one at some time, a little bit with another at another moment, but it’s very difficult.

What were the keys to your performance, Rodrigo?

De la Serna: An absolute lack of empathy for others, an “anti-conscience,” you could call it. For an actor, it was an immense challenge This is the darkest role that I’ve ever had. It very close to a vampire or a demon, or he really was a demon, the darkest shadow which a people have dreamed. The Argentine people has its luminous side, but also produces this type of monster.

I had to focus on Gordon’s psychopathology. He’s a compendium of all the pervasions I could cover and conceive, like a man who loses what is considered humanity: empathy with others, or an effort to work for a common good, which is what other characters are attempting. He’s a psychopath and perverse, enjoying others’ suffering.

And your aims as a director, Pablo?

Trapero: The large challenge from early on in the screenplay was how to cover a period which is so dark and so little visited: in audio-visual fiction, there are very few references to this period of Gordon’s life covered by the episodes. It was like opening a Pandora’s box, touching a taboo, something you couldn’t talk about out of fear and the complexes it generates. That drove our writing. Using fiction, we also wanted to bring the youngest generations something which might appear fit for history books, so that we don’t forget about what happens with violence. Sometimes in slogans or on social media violence seems abstract, but it’s beside us all the time and our duty as citizens is to care for others.