The Messiah It is much more than a fiction inspired by the Flos Mariae. The Javis do well to raise expectations about their series and warn that it is a bleak drama. The bizarre Catholic-musical ensemble that has given us so much joy (and so much sorrow) on YouTube is in The Messiah just an opening reference, a trigger-happy trigger, an excuse and a joke that isn’t a joke. What Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi build is infinitely more ambitious. Also much sadder. From its first sequence, a disturbing and sickening false step, The Messiah He displays an ambition that, in the hands of other creators, could be uncontrollable. But the Javis know how to tame their beast.
And to its beasts. Many characters in the series are played by multiple people. Montserrat, the backbone of the structure of this fiction, is brought to life by Ana Rujas, Lola Dueñas and Carmen Machi. The transitions between them are abrupt and very fine at the same time. Those of Roger Casamajor, Biel Rosell and the boy Bruno Núñez seem almost magical. Casamajor and Rujas, in charge of opening the stories of their characters in the most sordid situations, They will receive many prizes in the coming months. Everything indicates that The Messiah It will be crowned the best series of the season wherever it has the chance. The Javis have done it again.
Canino, Captain Fantastic o The forest They are the most obvious references of their series. There will be many more, because if the creators of Poison y Paquita Salas is to translate his chaotic personal world into living stories that are more technical than miracle. The script scaffolding The Messiah it’s prodigious and, above all, invisible, since one is already too deep into the series to stop and think about things other than the life of the Puig-Baró brothers.
Unable not to do a somersault when they have a springboard in front of them, the Javis never conform to the default genre of the stories they tell. Hence The Messiah be it drama, horror, customs, allegory, fable and, a little, comedy. Until the latter the series reaches an impressive point of mastery: The humorous moments are minimal and are perfectly placed in the script so that the series becomes, in its darkest moments, bearable.
Calvo and Ambrossi know (because they know it) that It is difficult to enter your series and not stay inside, so they have the delicacy of not crushing the captive viewer. The presentations of Irene (Macarena García) or Rosa (Gracia Olayo) are so bitter that either the series softens them a little or runs the risk of leaving us with a memory as painful as their story. The Stella Maris songs also perform that function, the (not) implausible starting point of a series that knows where it comes from but above all where it is going. Its seven episodes are seven wonders within the reach of very few current creators. As 2023 nears its end, The Messiah is crowned the great series of the year. Praise be.