The Movistar+ platform has just launched Mercenary, a documentary that, in principle, tells the first-person experience of a Catalan combatant from the Vall d'Aran in the Ukrainian War. Joan Estévez, trained as a soldier with the mountain troops of the Spanish Army and the French Legion, leaves his homeland with the desire to contribute to stopping the Russian invasion. At first, it seems that the story will revolve solely around his recordings in the trenches, showing how he lives and how he fights on the front lines. We see his daily life and also the most critical moments. We witness the most crude and sordid war. We even access an audio document in which we hear him announce that he will shoot a Russian soldier. After the shot, he whispers a comment: "I don't know if I'll ever be able to talk about all this with my son." There is a narcissistic component to all of this. The protagonist feels the need to film himself and assert himself. This constant dialogue between Estévez and a hypothetical observer of his recordings stimulates the character and becomes a kind ofinfluencer Warlike. He displays his empowerment through weapons, his uniform, his resilience, and his leadership in the unit of soldiers. But there are also moments when the protagonist dismounts. In fact, the documentary begins with him in the trenches firing, and then he looks at the camera crying and says, "I love you, Dad."
Little by little, we begin to sense that the protagonist has emotional cracks and that there are unclear circumstances in his life that are not fully explained. We discover the less clichéd side of these trench stories and also a somewhat more complex one. Joan Estévez, who belongs to a well-known family in the Vall d'Aran, hides a significant personal disorder. He explains that he is the son of the emeritus king's ski instructor, and that his father is his role model. He wants to please him and connect with him. He also reveals that in a short time, he lost his family, his home, and his businesses. The war in Ukraine is, therefore, a flight forward to avoid facing or managing problems. The documentary is divided between this adrenaline-fueled life in Ukraine and the parents' concern in the Aran Valley for their son to return home. And the cameras, without the need for a voiceover to guide the story, show us aspects that perhaps not even the protagonist himself is aware of. We discover the reasons for his separation and encounter a difficult, emotionally complex character. We see the ravages of toxic masculinity, who struggles to relate to and manage frustration, personal weaknesses, and suffering. At times, the documentary suffers from the same problem because, despite its desire to explore trauma, it constructs a kind of epic and compassion around the character that the viewer isn't always willing to concede.
