Colombia’s Medellin embraces Netflix biopic on Pablo Escobar
When it comes to drug lords, there’s no
matching Pablo Escobar. More than two decades after he was gunned down,
his vast wealth, megalomania and ruthless violence still mesmerize, as
evidenced by the attention surrounding Netflix’s upcoming series Narcos about the cartel boss.
The
biopic promises to be an authentic portrayal of Escobar, so it’s only
natural that Brazilian director and executive producer Jose Padilha
chose to film the 10-episode series in Medellin, Colombia, the murder
capital of the world during the drug kingpin’s heyday in the 1980s.
Filming the series here would have been
unthinkable a few years ago, with Colombians still blaming Escobar for
their country’s hard-to-shake association with drug trafficking. But as
memories of Escobar’s terror campaign fade, and with the homicide rate
at a decade low, Colombians are starting to view their violent past more
dispassionately. So much so that cinema-loving President Juan Manuel
Santos agreed to pick up $2-million (U.S.) in production costs so
Netflix could film in the country.
The
series, which debuts Aug. 28, is based on the account of Steve Murphy
and Javier Pena, now retired Drug Enforcement Administration agents who
were assigned to bring the drug lord down. It’s one of several projects
reviving interest in the man known as the “King of Cocaine,” including
last year’s film Escobar: Paradise Lost, starring Benicio del Toro. At least two more movies about Escobar are in development.
Because
of the lingering sensitivities about the bad reputation Escobar gave
Colombia, Netflix executives and Padilha flew to Bogota last year to
meet with Santos before filming.
The
president, whose family brought the Cinemark movie chain to Colombia,
immediately embraced the project, said Claudia Triana, head of the
state-funded Proimagenes film promotion agency. But Santos urged Padilha
not to romanticize a criminal who promoted himself as a Colombian Robin
Hood despite ordering thousands of people killed, from presidential
candidates to passengers on a commercial jetliner he had blown up.
Triana
said that no matter where the series was made it would have presented
the same image of Colombia, so it was preferable to have it filmed here
to make foreign members of the cast and crew more sensitive to the toll
Escobar’s bloodbath had on society.
Netflix,
with local production partner Dynamo, got the big subsidy to film under
an initiative Santos’ government launched in 2013 to market Colombia as
South America’s premier shooting location. The administration pays for
up to 40 per cent of filming costs to foreign producers who hire local
crews and spend at least $600,000 in the country.
While
some officials feared the series would portray the country negatively,
Triana said resistance to filmed depictions of Colombia’s violent
history has eased in part because of wildly popular soap operas known as
“narconovelas” that present an unvarnished view of the drug wars.
Still,
Congressman Rodrigo Lara said he’s skeptical that Colombia’s complex
history can be accurately rendered in a series whose trailer teases
audiences in English: “There’s No Business Like Blow Business,” using a
slang word for cocaine.
“When you take
real events and convert them into several episodes for a TV series, the
need to entertain and keep the audience hooked is always going to
predominate,” said Lara, whose father, a justice minister, was slain by
Escobar’s hit men in 1984.
Escobar’s
son, who changed his name to Sebastian Marroquin and moved to Argentina
after his father’s death, also questions how accurate the Netflix
depiction will be.
“I’m not very
convinced by stories sold as truthful that use my father’s name without
authorization and purposefully ignore the main keepers of his memories:
his family,” Marroquin said in an e-mail. He is the author of a book and
documentary about his relationship with his father.
Pena
and Murphy, who were technical consultants for the series, said Padilha
and the actors worked hard to provide an accurate look at what was then
the world’s largest manhunt. Brazilian actor Wagner Moura, who stars as
Escobar, studied Spanish in Medellin to approach the capo’s thick
regional accent. Pedro Pascal and Boyd Holbrook, who play Pena and
Murphy, embedded with real-life anti-narcotics agents at the DEA’s
academy in Quantico, Va.
Huge
quantities of cocaine still flow out of Colombia and violence continues
at chronically high levels. Last year’s homicide rate, while the lowest
in a decade, was still almost six times that of the United States.
But
the possibility of Colombia becoming a narco state, a real threat
during Escobar’s time, has lifted, said Medellin writer Hector Abad
Faciolince, allowing Colombians to view the drug trade more objectively.
“A
few years ago we Colombians were overzealous when it came to displaying
our sores, our vices and our wounds,” said Faciolince, whose father, a
human rights activist, was killed by right-wing paramilitaries during an
especially violent period that coincided with Escobar’s reign. “Now we
handle it better because it seems that the worst is behind us.”
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