In the Homeric journey that the Spanish actor Pedro Alonso undertook after the hit by The Money Heist shamans and peyote, healers and ayahuasca, ice and water appear. And spirituality, fear and life because The documentary that has just been released is an odyssey in search of a way to reconnect(us) with the world.
On the ship of enchantment It is titled and can be seen on Netflix since this week. It’s a “road movie” through Mexicoon the one hand, and a journey through ancestral rites, shamanic ceremonies and hallucinogenic substances, on the other. A search in any case.
Alonso, together with co-director Enrique Baró, meets EFE in a hotel in Madrid to talk about this documentary that he has written, produced and directed, and in which he has exposed his soul.
“Savage honesty”
On the ship of enchantment addresses “a sensitive topic”, a “taboo”: the consumption of substances seen as medicinal in ancestral Mexican culturesbut frowned upon in modern Western cultures.
It was “easy to over-brake”, very easy to “pontificate”, much easier to want to establish oneself as the “new guru of modernity”. Alonso, however, wanted to escape from all this, so he thought and debated with his team an appropriate formula.. An attitude. A “savage honesty.”
“If we hadn’t done it, If we had let ourselves be carried away by the neurotic fears of cancellation, it would have confirmed the existence of the dictatorship of the single thought. (…) If I didn’t do it, I would be narrowing the margins of the conversation,” he continues.
Meditation, ego and disassembly
On the ship of enchantment It is the interior-exterior journey of Pedro Alonso. Difficult balance for an ego that wants to escape its own trap.
How to walk on such a fine balance? «I talk about myself in the first person, but the conversation is universal«. Because this road movie full of rock and indie pop themes is not about drugs. The ceremonies not only address the immersion in the alternative worlds to which the hallucinogenic plants lead.
There is much more, Alonso exclaims. «They are ritual ceremonies of respect, never with recreational purposes. We are there with a purpose of knowledge, of connection“, he argues before proclaiming: “I don’t want to fall even one bit into telling a boy ‘go get an ayahuasca and you’ll see how cool it is.’ Not applicable. We look for meditative ways to dismantle ourselves.
Water at two degrees and the idea of dying
Enrique Baró, the co-director, says that the documentary is an “immersive experience”. Whoever sees it will go to the Sonoran Desert or be exposed to the methods of a shaman who says: “The planet needs to rest.”
You will also attend an ayahuasca ceremony that removes and rediscovers identities. Or he will climb a mountain to talk to the spirit of water. Or he will submerge himself up to his head in a bathtub full of ice.
Alonso says that «When you get into cold water, at two degrees, your body and mind tell you that you are dying, get out of here, but then we do holistic and comprehensive work that consists of regulating breathing, and in 35 seconds your neurotic thought disappears.«.
Meanwhile, on this side of the world, the actor points out, “boys and girls are told to be competitive, to be a model and to earn money for it.”
“We are blinded and reinforcing our Western gaze, seeing the world from a vantage point while we go crazy,” he adds.
A path after depression
Alonso began to follow this path of healing as a result of “severe depression” after turning 30.
«It has done me very well, but you have to be careful. This is on the margins. I wouldn’t go with a guy who comes and asks me to go in his Formula 1. The preparation and expertise of the specialist is important. And we have all had experiences with drugs, too. All. “People go blind with official drugs while demanding their son not to do it,” he elaborates.
But no slogans or dogmas. As Baró emphasizes, what It is about “each person finding their way towards reconnection with themselves.”
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