I’m home alone this week, and as my parents left me a rather substantial amount of money to keep myself clothed and fed while they’re away, I found I could afford to rent a movie for once. I rented “Alariste“.

“Alariste” is a Spanish movie, based on five novels by the author Arturo Perez-Revertes, and it is a historical adventure movie set in Spain and her domains in the 17th century, during the Thirty Years War. This was the period in which Spain’s waning power became apparent even to outsiders — previous, the Spanish had been able to hide the rot through spectatular construction and other forms of pomp; extravagant measures that in time would do its fair share to facilitate the fall of the Spanish Empire.

In this setting — which unfortunately was underexposed in the movie; without History 1100 I doubt I’d have understood much of the movie’s context — we find Diego “the Captain” Alatriste (Viggo Mortensen), a soldier in the feared Spanish infantery, a mercenary and an adventurer. After fighting in Flandern, he returns to Spain where he is drawn into court intrigue and the rivalry between the various factions surrounding the weak King Filip IV. He is also given the care of Iñigo, the son of one of his fallen comrades.

The movie follows Alatriste and Iñigo through the next twenty years, in their constant struggle to keep their heads above the water. And this is the fundamental plot of the movie: Aside from some nefarious courtiers and a few dangerous swordsmen, there aren’t any clearly defined antagonists, and neither is there a quest, a mission, a single dominating intrigue to act as a red thread throughout the movie. This can be frustrating at times, especially as the various minor intrigues aren’t too carefully explained, as the characters are only vaguely presented, and as much is hinted at rather than explained out loud.

At times this made it hard to keep up on what was going on, but the movie was still captivating and thrilling. The adventures of the well-played “Captain” Alatriste and his small band of rogues, this semi-decent man in a rotten kingdom, was fine craftsmanship, with good acting, an interesting (if a bit shallow) setting, decent characters, and awesome scenery and costumes — apparently they’d been inspired by a great Spanish painter of the era, Diego Velázquez, who understood and portrayed the contrast between the magnificent pomp and the corruption of his day and time.

“Alatriste” could of course have been better. As I’ve already mentioned, the characters and their roles in Spanish society were hardly introduced, something which created some confusion. The same can be said of the setting. The various rival factions weren’t really introduced at all, and it wasn’t really clear who a lot of the characters sided with in any given situation. At the same time, the movie was crammed full with plot. There was war, personal rivalries, political intrigues, love dramas, conflicts between the protagonists, and much more. It was fairly obvious that this movie was based on no less than five novels, and also that the movie would probably have benefitted from only being based on one or two, or at least a maximum of three. (As a sixth novel supposedly was published last year, two movies à three books would probably have been a better solution.)

But all in all, I really liked this one. I suspect, though, that people who know even less than I do about Europe in the 17th century, could have serious problems with grasping what the hell was going on. 7.0/10.