Alberto Rodríguez’ Marshland: True Detective, paella style

It is not uncommon for a film director – or their art director – to want their setting to "become a character in its own right". That notion counts double for Alberto Rodríguez's much-lauded police thriller Marshland, a film punctuated and defined by its use of the oddly geometrical wetland formations of the Guadalquivir river in southern Spain.

These extraordinary images – enhanced by stunning aerial photography from the National Scientific Investigation Centre’s Héctor Garrido – entailed a gruelling shoot, fighting temperatures that ranged from 42 degrees in late summer to -2 degrees in November. It was a “logistical nightmare”, says Rodríguez, but no other place would do.

“Some years ago, I attended a photography exhibition with Alex Catalán, the film’s director of photography, who is also a good friend,” explains the director. “Atín Aya, the photographer from Seville, had devoted himself to capturing the last vestiges of a style of life that existed in the marshlands of the Guadalquivir river for centuries.

“Many of the photographs were portraits of the locals and showed a mixture of resignation, mistrust and hardness, which were part of those faces frozen in the past and that, with the mechanization of the labour, most likely wouldn’t have much of a future.”

Marshland swept last year's Goya Awards, winning an unprecedented 10 gongs. But what Rodríguez and his regular screenwriting partner, Rafael Cobos, could not have known was that, across the Atlantic, HBO had just greenlit the first series of the similarly themed True Detective.

Detectives’ story

Like the HBO hit, Marshland draws heavily on its harsh rural landscape. And, like True Detective, Marshland brings together two mismatched, jaded cops – political firebrand Pedro and the older, damaged Juan – to investigate a series of bizarre, strangely seasonal murders. It follows that, as Marshland made its way into Anglophone territories, it was immediately hailed as the "Iberian True Detective".

"My inspiration came from books and films such as [Roberto] Bolaño's 2666, The Bait, Mystery of Murders, Chinatown and Bad Day at Black Rock", says Rodríguez. "I am a big fan of genre and I'm sure that I have been unconsciously influenced by many other movies and directors.

"I do realise that many viewers and journalists have mentioned that Marshland reminds them of True Detective. I had never heard of the TV series and, while editing the movie, Raul Arevalo, the actor playing Pedro, sent me a phone message with the teaser trailer for the series and said: 'Alberto, someone has copied your idea and decided to make a TV series'.

"Last Easter I had some time and I finally watched True Detective. I really enjoyed it and I could see some similarities."

Grim days

There are, too, some crucial differences between the two: the events depicted in Marshland take place after the 1978 constitution but before the 1982 election, at a moment of Spanish political unrest, an uneasiness that repeatedly sneaks into the film.

“We set the story in 1980 because it was a year of great political tension in Spain,” says Rodríguez. “Perhaps this was the year when the old regime – the dictatorship that was still alive but was disappearing – and the just-born fledgling democracy, were having the hardest tug of war. This caused such political tension that it ended in a failed coup in 1981.

“It is one of the most interesting periods of recent Spanish history. There was a contrast between the enthusiasm of the people who awaited democracy with great hopes and a black, sordid, poor country.”

Rodríguez's previous film, Unit 7, was inspired by the corrupt anti-narcotics police unit tasked cleaning up the Seville slums for the 1992 World Expo Fair. Marshland, too, relies on real life correlatives.

Police and politics

"Unit 7 is actually a gangster film," says the Seville-born filmmaker. "It is the rise and fall of gangster band wearing badges. But my movies always have a strong political underlying story, which in Unit 7 was about how Spain, and more specifically Seville, in 1990 was about to host the 1992 World Exhibition and needed to 'clean' the city regardless of the methods used to achieve that goal.

"In Marshland, there is also a political underlying story. The two cops represent the two Spains existing in 1980. In both cases we drew inspiration from real events that took place in those years.

“In the case of Pedro, we used the real story of a policeman who was admonished and retired from his post just because he expressed his repulsion towards some of the military who were in favour of an overthrow of the government.”

Marshland is out now