He is not a monster; he is a snake charmer. Vicuña takes on the challenge of humanizing greed in the skin of Max Mayol, the antagonist who believes he is saving the ship while sinking it.
Although he is the villain of the story, Max Mayol does not wake up in the morning thinking about doing evil. Far from being a monster laughing in the dark, the General Manager played by Benjamín Vicuña in Que Se Acabe Todo is charming, dresses well, and has enough charisma to convince you that going into debt is a path to freedom.
“He is a man who lives for leadership. He truly believes that this is a way to democratize credit, to help people,” Benjamín explains regarding the psyche of a character whose engine is not pure malice, but a genuine passion for his life’s project: the retail giant called El Solar, which promises appliances and dignity in installments.
That is the trap, and it was the greatest acting challenge: Mayol is a believer in his own lie, and that conviction was key for director Moisés Sepúlveda when casting him. “Benja has a natural charm that works perfectly for Max Mayol. He is someone you want to believe in. And precisely because of that, his character is so dangerous,” the director comments.
Together, they worked to find a tone that avoided the cliché of the evil businessman, seeking the human face of an inhuman system. “Apparently, he’s a good guy. But that makes it not so easy to simply qualify him as a villain,” the actor says about the ambiguity that defines the character.
This duel of power and charm had an extra layer of emotion on set, as Vicuña shares the screen with protagonist Paulina García, who has been his teacher, scene partner, and director in previous projects. “It has been an honor to accompany her in such a powerful leading role,” Benjamín confesses. “She has an incredible character who goes through every state; a character that challenges, mobilizes, and is also empathetic to everyone who might experience a situation like this.”
Although their roles clash in the fiction—he is the untouchable manager and she is the employee rising out of necessity—the real dynamic is one of absolute admiration, a feeling Paulina returns with equal intensity: “I’ve worked with Benja a lot, so I know him very well. He is an actor with an incredible trajectory and I’ve watched him grow over all these years. Working with him is a joy.”
Beyond the tailored suits and the corruption of the plot, Vicuña sees a political urgency in this project. In times when theaters fight against the immediacy of algorithms, he is categorical in defining his craft: “Making cinema today is an act of resistance. It is a wonderful creative act that has to do with expression, memory, and identity.”
For the actor, Que Se Acabe Todo transcends entertainment; it is the portrait of a moral crisis. “Passion is the engine that gets us up in the morning. We have a commitment to telling stories. This case was a cry of indignation, about a massive financial crime that impacted us as a country,” he concludes.