The series that Argentina had been waiting to see for more than half a century

A snow that falls incessantly over Buenos Aires marks the apocalyptic imagery ofThe Eternaut, the comic written by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and drawn by Francisco Solano López, recently released as a series on Netflix. In the original work, also published in serial format between 1957 and 1959, the image of deadly dust falling from the sky and raining down on the world echoes with the memory of the black rain of Hiroshima. The comic appeared in the midst of the Cold War and, within the codes of science fiction, could be read from that anti-war consciousness. The subsequent fate of its creator soaked The Eternaut Another retrospective interpretation. A member of the Montoneros from the 1970s onwards, Oesterheld was kidnapped by his country's armed forces during the military dictatorship. His four daughters, Marina, Beatriz, Diana, and Estela, young women between the ages of 18 and 26, had already been "disappeared" beforehand. Their bodies have never been found, nor have the perpetrators been brought to trial. The Oesterhelds' repression imbued his emblematic work with a metaphorical subtext in which the protagonists, a group of survivors of an alien invasion, become an example of how to resist in a state of exceptional violence.

The premiere ofThe Eternaut has become a real event in Argentina. Oesterheld and Solano López's work has the same status in its country of origin as a Borges story or a Cortázar novel. So much so that the various projects to adapt it to film, some with names like Adolfo Aristarain and Lucrecia Martel behind them, have always been surrounded by a certain aura of impossible mission. Thus, a huge expectation surrounded its transfer to the screen. The direction has been taken by Bruno Stagnaro, the director of Pizza, beer, weed (1998), a title that promoted the New Argentine Cinema, and from the mythical series Squatters (2000).

In the adaptation, co-signed with fellow actor Ariel Staltari, Stagnaro moves the comic's plot to the present and changes the age of the protagonist, Juan Salvo, to fit that of his actor, Ricardo Darín. The update makes sense in a science fiction plot that can be read as a portrait of a country, Argentina, which finds itself in a permanent state of crisis and forces its citizens to always live in survival mode. The era and age of the protagonist also allow him to be burdened with a specific historical trauma that once again makes the comic's anti-war undertone resonate, in addition to granting him unexpected abilities. The choice of Darín makes clear the ambition of the proposal. The series ofThe Eternaut He relies on the most popular and prestigious face in Argentine cinema to certify the level at which he operates and to reach the widest possible audience.

Ricardo Darín, indisputable

Darín's character also ends up embodying the contradictions of that adaptation. The Eternaut successfully handles the transition to audiovisual codes. But it runs into an obvious problem. When the comic was published, its narrative of post-apocalyptic survival was considered innovative. The series, on the other hand, leaves a certain aftertaste of déjà vu, a variant with an Argentinean slang that doesn't quite stand out in the crowded panorama of survival fiction. Darín, however, is indisputably the protagonist, but rather than becoming an Argentine hero with all his symbolism, he seems to be modeled after certain American archetypes. Perhaps for all this, more than in the action sequences, the series finds its strength in the scenes of purely abstract disquiet, when the protagonist, wearing his mask, advances uncertainly through a world that will never be the same again.