Carlos (miniseries)

Carlos
Theatrical release poster
Written by	Olivier Assayas Dan Franck Daniel Leconte
Directed by	Olivier Assayas
Starring	Édgar Ramírez Alexander Scheer Nora von Waldstätten Ahmad Kaabour Christoph Bach Susanne Wuest Anna Thalbach Julia Hummer
Country of origin	France Germany
Original languages	English French Arabic German Spanish Japanese Hungarian Russian
Production
Producers	Daniel Leconte Jens Meuer
Cinematography	Yorick Le Saux Denis Lenoir
Editors	Luc Barnier Marion Monnier
Running time	319–338 min (full version)[1] 166–187 min (short versions)
Production companies	Film En Stock Egoli Tossell Film
Budget	$18,000,000
Original release
Network	Canal+
Release	19 May 2010 (2010-05-19)

Carlos, also known as Carlos the Jackal,

Carlos's band, based in Budapest and protected by Syria, fosters links with various clients interested in their particular capabilities, among them Libya and Nicolae Ceaușescu's Romania. This intense activity of geopolitical destabilization, orchestrated by Carlos who is trafficking arms, handling huge sums of cash and leading the life of the "Godfather of European terrorism", is soon to come to an end. His decline is closely linked to the changes in the world order. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, he loses several of his backers, is told to leave Syria, and his arena of operation is drastically reduced. The last place offering refuge is Sudan: Carlos is by now retired and tracked by the secret services of several countries, abandoned by his closest allies, a long way from the center stage of international politics. His role as a player is over; he is left to observe the shifts in global power from a distance. With the complicity of the Sudanese authorities, and due to immobility from a testicular condition, he is captured on August 14, 1994 and brought back to Paris to stand trial for crimes that have not been forgotten in France.

Cast

Background

Initially, Carlos was to focus on the terrorist's capture in Sudan in 1994 and run only 90 minutes. However, once director Olivier Assayas agreed to make the film and he conducted extensive research, he realized that there was much more to explore with the man and his times: "I felt it was the fate of one man and, in a certain way, the story of one generation, plus a meditation on time, history, fate and issues more universal than the specific history of Carlos".^[9] Former foreign correspondent and Le Monde editor Stephen Smith compiled the film's research, some of which came from the files of intelligence agencies^[9] that became available after the fall of the Berlin Wall when files from former Soviet Bloc countries surfaced. Some of the film's dialogue came from tape recordings made by the Stasi, the secret police of the former East Germany.^[10] Made with a budget of $18 million, Carlos was Assayas's first foray into television.^[11] Originally, he was not interested in the project because it seemed "too crazy and too complicated".^[12] He was drawn to the project because it allowed him to make a film dealing with recent history and real people. He said, "not long ago, the idea of making a film about Carlos would have scared French producers, but nowadays I sense that we're being encouraged to make films that have a contemporary dimension".^[11] Actor Edgar Ramirez said, "What we're trying to do is demystify him. This guy who supposedly had everything figured out was not as keen as he was said to be. The public and historical image was as history's big manipulator but in many moments of his life, he was being manipulated".^[12]

Production

Initially, Assayas was worried about finding the right actor to play Carlos because they needed one who had "the shoulders and the charisma to carry this kind of movie on his back".^[9] He cast Ramirez who, like the real Carlos, is a Venezuelan and his family came from the same small Western Andean state. The actor described Carlos as, "a bit of a monster, a bit of a dreamer, a bit of an idealist, a bit of an assassin, a mixture of everything, full of contradictions, and that's what made him interesting to me".^[9] The production was shot in seven months across three continents in countries such as Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Lebanon, and Morocco.^[13] The film was shot mostly in English with passages in French, Spanish, Hungarian, Italian, Arabic, German, Russian, Dutch, and Japanese.^[14] As filming continued, Ramirez put on 35 pounds (16 kg) in order to resemble Carlos's overweight physical condition at the time of his capture. The final two hours of the film were shot in sequence.^[15]

US release

Already in November 2009,

Reception

Carlos' reaction and lawsuit

Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, the real-life "Carlos", saw extracts of Assayas's film and his lawyer threatened legal action to prevent its general release, arguing that it could prejudice future trial hearings for Carlos who faces trial for at least four more attacks in France.^[17] He read the screenplay and criticized it for its "deliberate falsifications of history, and lies".^[17] He was specifically unhappy with a sequence depicting a hostage-taking by his gang at the 1975 OPEC conference in Vienna and how his methods were depicted: "Showing hysterical men waving submachine guns and threatening people is completely ridiculous," he insisted. "Things didn't happen like that. These were professionals, commandos of a very high standard".^[17] His lawyer tried to block the film's release, arguing that Carlos had a right to see it beforehand, but the judge dismissed the complaint on the grounds that it violated Assayas's freedom of expression. His lawyer plans to bring two more lawsuits, one that argues the film breaches pre-trial judicial secrecy laws and a second that demands Carlos be paid royalties for his life's role in providing material for the scriptwriters.^[17]

Reaction at Cannes

Carlos has received widespread critical acclaim with Ramirez's performance being praised. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 93% based on reviews from 69 critics, with an average score of 8/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Despite its hefty running time, Carlos moves along briskly, thanks to an engaging story, exotic locales, and a breakout performance by Edgar Ramirez."^[18] Metacritic gave the film a weighted score of 94/100, based on 21 critics, which it ranks as "universal acclaim".^[19]

However, Entertainment Weekly magazine's Owen Gleiberman wrote, "But as electrifying as some of it is, I wish that Assayas had made Carlos at once shorter and richer. I wish it were more than an episodic series of galvanizingly staged plots and executions and mishaps".^[26] In his review for The Boston Globe, Wesley Morris felt that the film was, "hardly dumb. But it peaks early and never returns to the sharper ideas and sharper filmmaking of the second of its three sections".^[27] Time magazine's Richard Corliss wrote, "And Carlos, while matching the Coppola and Lean films in length and breadth, misses out on depth ... No masterpiece, Assayas' movie is a fast-paced, knowing trip through two decades of violence on two continents".^[28] In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote, "Played by Mr. Ramirez with jolts of charisma and, smartly, little of the usual movie-star charm—if not much depth or nuance—Carlos is a difficult character on which to hang such an ambitious, inherently cumbersome tale".^[29]

Later reviews

In his review for