[This story contains spoilers from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe.]
For Aitch Alberto, bringing Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s beloved 2012 queer coming-of-age novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe to the big screen was an expansive experience.
Serving as both its writer and director, adapting the story for the screen took seven years and spanned her transition — an experience, like that of her own characters, rife with the kind of poetic and painful introspection that comes with discovering oneself.
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Through that process, she had a heavy-hitting producing team behind her, including Eugenio Derbez, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Dylan Sellers, Chris Parker and Ben Odell, as well as Valerie Stadler of Big Swing Productions, a company Stadler co-founded with Meredith Bagby and Kyra Sedgwick.
Set in El Paso beginning in 1987, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe follows Aristotle Mendoza (Max Pelayo) and Dante Quintana (Reese Gonzales), two loners who have a chance meeting at a public pool. When Dante offers to help Ari learn how to swim, the two are set on a path that will force the duo — Dante an open book, Ari careful with his words — to examine who they really are from the inside out. It’s a careful exploration of the fear around not yet knowing who you are amid the tensions of teenhood and the burgeoning of queerness.
Alberto, who is currently a writer on strike with the WGA, spoke to The Hollywood Reporter in her capacity as a director about the intricacies of telling a tender coming-of-age story centered on two 15-year-old Mexican American boys who discover the depths of a universe inside themselves and each other across two eventful years.
You’ve got a notable Mexican and Mexican American cast playing the parents in this film — Eugenio Derbez, Eva Longoria, Veronica Falcón and Kevin Alejandro. Can you talk about their work on this?
These people were so powerful, and I joke all the time that it was the Latinx mafia. If it wasn’t for them, this movie wouldn’t have gotten made. I think they recognized the urgency and the importance of this story, and it meant so much that they showed up with so much love and so much willingness and so much trust. I think they know the necessity of this story in such a real way. So I’m forever grateful for all of those names that came and said, “Yes, I got your back,” which is really what they did. Not in a PR kind of way. They really fucking did that.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s book is a really holistic coming-of-age story and on screen, you grapple with so many of the experiences and relationships that shape people at that age. Was there a part of the novel that helped you lift that dynamic, complex experience into the film most?
That’s such an expansive question to answer because often when it comes to stories about queerness or identity, it’s so distilled to one aspect of what that is. We’re so much more nuanced than that. The pain of growing up is not only informed by our queerness, but everything that surrounds that. That’s what spoke to me so viscerally in the book, and what I wanted to capture in the movie. So it was really important for me to hold all of those things as much as possible, even if it feels complicated, or if it’s tackling too much. I think that’s the immersiveness of the story. What is Ari feeling throughout? What’s so important for him to navigate to, then come to a version of: an answer or a beginning of an answer? In order to recognize or be able to address these things, I need to look at myself. We see the tipping point, the moment in this story that he realizes that he has to go down that really difficult path because the war inside of him is far more painful than the war outside of him.
When watching, it’s hard not to feel like you capture intricacies and truths about gender and sexuality in a way a cisgender director wouldn’t or couldn’t. How did your own experience inform the filmmaking here?
You don’t understand how fucking painful it was to get this made and how long, and to hear you say this is so validating. It was a seven-year journey to get to set. I transitioned throughout the making of this movie. I was so desperate to get it made because I thought it would be an answer to me continuing to pretend and avoid the truth of who I am. There was a moment that I realized that the thing that was holding me back was that very thing of, “Oh, shit, we have so many false starts around this.” The universe was waiting for me to walk through my truth, so I could be ready to tell this story. If you look at my work prior, it’s so angry. It’s so violent. This story required a gentle lens rooted in nothing but love. Had I not gone through the same journey that Ari goes through in the book and in the movie, I wouldn’t have been able to lens this the way that it is now.
And for you to recognize that… (Pauses.) It would have been impossible because my perspective of the world hadn’t been opened up until I was ready to walk through my truth. That’s a fact. That’s why it fucking took so long. My producer [Valerie Stadler] who saw me, who was with me, at first she was like, “You’re not ready to direct this,” and I was like, “What do you mean I’m not fucking ready to direct this? I’m ready to direct it.” And when I made that decision, she said, “OK, now you’re ready.” I think she saw something in me that I hadn’t seen in myself. This will forever be the most pure, personal experience of my life for all of those reasons. It stood by me, and it mirrored my trajectory as a creative and, honestly, as a human being. So yeah, I agree with you. I don’t think that a cisgender person would have been able to capture the nuances the way that I did.
Gender operates differently in Ari and Dante’s families, who also appear to be from different classes — something that affects the role models they have and freedom to find themselves. How did you think about capturing the relationship between gender, masculinity, class and culture?
That was, more than any class or socioeconomic status, generational for me. Because when I look at my family, and I really look at my father, specifically, with the most compassion that I can, I recognize that he is a victim of a generational block, which is also very cultural. I’m second generation, and being raised by immigrant parents, even though they still existed in survival mode, I was able to see the world, or I had more of an opportunity to see the world differently than my father did. That was always my guiding light. My dad grew up in the hood. He was raised by two parents. His options were limited. So where he fails me as a father is completely generational. I think it’s up to me to break that cycle. It’s our generation that’s having these conversations, that’s asking these questions.
I wanted to juxtapose these two families in a subtle way to explore those two things. They’re a product of an immigrant mentality versus a more second generation family that maybe had more opportunity to exist, to explore. I think that makes such a difference with how these two boys embody the world. It’s such a testament to if we give young people the room to explore, anything is possible. It is very differently gendered in the household, too. Eva’s character [Dante’s mom] is a therapist while the dad is a writer, more artistic and has a different perspective on masculinity. But always the most important part to me was how do I redefine the narrative for Latino people and people of color when it comes to masculinity. It equated to this generational divide of having to survive in the world differently than I think we have to.
There are so many cultural nuances in this film that speak to Ari as a Mexican American boy on a journey with racial identity and his masculinity. Can you talk about how you used cultural specificity to reject the kind of flattened, stereotypical depictions we’ve frequently seen?
The most important thing for me was to have a really gentle approach to all of those things. I never wanted to be too violent. I think the violent moment in the movie is earned because he needs some form of release. But everything around that, I never wanted to — and which is what spoke to me so much about the book — veer into a trope or a stereotype that we’ve so often seen, to your point of the flattening of our culture, because of the power of media. Because we haven’t had the chance to tell our own stories. I wanted to celebrate those nuances in a way that felt fresh and, more than anything, to give us another option of how to look at all those themes.
Because we haven’t had that. We haven’t had the gentle dad. We haven’t had the dad that is super rooted in his masculinity but refuses to let it define how he raises and looks at his son. That was so important to me. I think, because we’re in some ways really new to this country, that conversation about race is one that we don’t have as a community because we are so divided. I have a theory that we’re a little further behind than other minorities and other people of color in certain industries because historically, generationally, [our] people have come to this country, and we do manual labor. The arts were never an option. It’s all of these things that I too have sat and tried to investigate because it’s so mind-boggling to me that I look at people that I love, and I feel that their mentality is so antiquated and so far behind. Why is that? This is an investigation of all of those questions.
I don’t think the movie answers that. I think it’s raising questions, so we could start to have these conversations. I don’t think there’s been any movie or piece of media that has truly invited the nuance of what that is. We still need to figure it out, but I think it goes back to, how do we break these stereotypes? It’s us realizing that we need each other and need to look at each other and have these conversations with each other.
How you use water and celestial elements speaks to queerness conceptually — the transitory state and the internal, endless expansion that happens when you discover who you are. How did those visual motifs help you tell the story of Ari and Dante?
It was important for me to lean into nature. How can we get it to mirror its own universe? When it came to the water, how do we make it look like it’s an underwater galaxy, an underwater universe where it’s limitless; where anything is possible; where there’s this joy. How do we find the joy in the elements to mirror how these two boys are feeling and thinking? Some of that is often not joyful. It’s pain. So I wanted to find those opportunities where we subtly — since Aristotle’s journey is so internal — externalize that.
To me, it was the elements. When Dante says — and I don’t know if anybody notices it — “We’re moving,” it starts to rain. I tried to find the opportunity where the universe was reflecting back what Ari was feeling. The water was probably the most important metaphor and mirror to Ari’s journey, from the very moment that Dante opens his mouth. How he embodies that universe and sees himself is so clearly there to me. I think it’s rebirth. It’s also so feminine. It’s a representation of mother, and there were so many layered elements that I’m so happy you recognize, because oftentimes, I didn’t say them out loud.
Ari doesn’t say much out loud and even when viewers are seeing through his eyes, they’re frequently hearing Dante’s voice. Can you talk about your visual approach to capturing Ari’s internal experiences and feelings?
The camera was really the way that I wanted to do that. We never see Ari full-framed, center camera, [until] the moment after he has that conversation with his parents [about his feelings for Dante]. We’re always seeing him obstructed through glass, through someone else’s vision, over the shoulder. He’s never face-on. That’s because that’s how he’s feeling. When I was working with Akis [Konstantakopoulos], the director of photography, it was like, at every given moment, our North Star is how do we use the camera to tell the audience how Ari is feeling in that moment? Also, I wanted to create this touch of surrealism in a way that was very subtle. I wanted to create a fantasy, a fairytale quality — a grounded world where magic was possible.
How do we use light to visualize magic, even though we often miss it in our daily lives? When you’re framing it, you’re forcing the audience to look at the possibility that magic exists in our world. How do we contain them, or have the world disappear when it’s just them — which is the feeling that you have when you’re with this person that’s so clearly sees you. One of the notes from someone was, “It looks like there’s no production value.” I was like, “It doesn’t matter. That’s not the point.” The whole world disappears. That’s why they’re walking on a street and there’s no cars, there’s no one walking around. They’re in their own universe.
Understanding a deep longing to be close to someone of the same gender in a world that doesn’t model what that looks like can be difficult because you don’t have the language or feel safe to name it. Can you talk about your approach to portraying that?
I have this very important mission to refuse to other myself and to other the stories that I’m involved in, and to other the characters that I bring to life. That is very important to me. At the root of this, Ari never claims his sexuality, but he claims his love for Dante. That was what was most important for me. How does love transcend in a way that we don’t need to explain it, but we can see how painful it is when the world around you tells you that you’re wrong for who you are, for how you feel, where you don’t find yourself or see yourself in something else?
It took me 34 years to transition. I thought about my identity, my gender, every single day for those 34 years. But I grew up in a culture and a society that told me I was wrong for feeling that. I want people to watch this and be assured that they’re OK for feeling the way that they feel. It’s possible to love gently and without question. Sometimes you do need someone to give you permission to do that. That’s what this story is. It’s hopefully giving permission for people to see themselves as not an “other,” but as an expansive human that’s possible at anything when you choose love over fear. Fear is rooted in shame, which is what held me back.
A lot of Ari’s silence appears to be rooted in fear. You and Derbez’s performance point to it fueling some of Jaime’s silence. And after Dante is attacked, we see him, too, become quieter.
Oh, my God, thank you for seeing that.
It emphasizes something that makes the book and film a little distinct from some other queer stories, which is that it focuses on the self-created, internal cages that prevent people from being free. Can you unpack that connection to silence and fear and how it almost takes both boys?
That was — that’s the movie. That’s the movie. It’s do you choose love or fear. When you start the movie, Ari is in such a state of fear. Which looks very similar to how I existed in the world, so I related to that very viscerally. Dante is fearless, and it goes back to these environments that they’re growing up in. There’s an invitation to exist without fear versus fear. Aristotle is in a family silenced by traumatic events, who don’t know how to talk because they don’t have the tools to navigate a conversation around fear. Where the other is the complete opposite, and we’re seeing that reflected in how these two boys walk in the world. Then when life happens to us, as humans, as queer folks, as people of color, it starts chipping away at our fear and our love. We lean into one or the other.
I think we see the journey of these two boys go through that on the reverse, but not for long on Dante. There is that moment, and I don’t want to spoil anything, but he’s invited to walk back into love versus fear. But Ari — I mean, that’s how I existed when I was angry and didn’t want to talk about things. You avoid and pretend, and you have something to prove, even though it’s quiet. You’re always on guard and your dukes are always up, and you’re always ready to fight because you don’t want to have to use your words. So that’s why quiet is so possible. If you blend, if you hide, if you don’t speak, then no one will notice that there’s this other internalized question, struggle, pain.
That speaks to the nature of the secret around why Ari’s brother is incarcerated.
That’s such a thing within the Latino community. We’re so, so worried about the optics of how people see us because we generationally have tried to blend in for so long and to belong, that we don’t talk about our ugly. So then we avoid it, but the ugly is still fucking there. What I’ve learned is when you face something, it starts to go away, even though it never goes away. It’s like this dark shadow. To me, there’s this level of shame within my community that’s really painful to watch. We’re constantly choosing shame over the opposite. We’re so capable of love in such a real way, but it’s often like, “He’s queer, she’s queer — but they’re a good person.” It’s the vicious cycle of shame that we haven’t been able to break because we don’t use our words. That’s what this whole thing is about. Silence can be powerful and there’s a lot of beauty in that, but we do need to fucking use our voices because that’s the only way we’re going to shift the narrative.
Ari and his father have an emotional but really touching journey capped off by a scene at the end when Ari realizes silence has kept him from being who he is, and also knowing who his father is. What did you most want people to take away from that father-son relationship?
It took me a long time to humanize my folks. But when we humanize our parents — and we realize these are people just like us who have these complicated lives, who don’t know what the hell they’re doing, but are trying their best — that’s a really humbling powerful moment and invitation for compassion, empathy. Which we sometimes forget because as children, we think our parents are the entire universe with every answer. And when we realize that they’re figuring it out with us, we get to join forces, versus have us think that they’re our adversary. I think that’s what happens with Ari and his dad when he realizes that his father doesn’t know how to talk about his pain the same way that he doesn’t. We need to do more of that, and I think the way that we do that — because our parents don’t have the tools — is we guide that. That’s what I’ve done with my mom as of late: “Wait, I’ll help you. I’ll re-parent you because you didn’t have that opportunity.” That’s what I hope people start to recognize, and that this movie is a beginning of that.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is out in theaters.
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