Post by Dracula on Nov 26, 2022 9:51:53 GMT -5
Argentina, 198511/7/2022
From 1976 to 1983 Argentina was taken over by a brutal military junta which engaged in a “dirty war” characterized by state terrorism, repression, and “disappearances.” Eventually democracy was restored and that is where this new Amazon produced prestige film Argentina, 1985 picks up and follows Chief Prosecutor Julio César Strassera as he is tasked with prosecuting these former dictators for war crimes in civilian court. This is no easy task as these people still have strong ties to the military and the police and still have their supporters in the public. It’s such a “hot” case that most experienced lawyers don’t want to touch it, forcing Strassera to assemble a team of young law students to act as his assistants. Much of the film is focused on the toll all of this takes on Strassera, who is constantly being threatened by anonymous callers and the like and who also needs to prevent his witnesses from being intimidated. The film’s courtroom scenes are at times wrenching, with witnesses giving detailed accounts of the horrors these dictators put them through, though I would have perhaps liked a bit of a better understanding of some of the details of how Strassera managed to tie all of this to the generals. My understanding is that their main defense was to claim that these actions were undertaken by rogue elements in the military and the crux of the prosecution was in proving that the crimes were too widespread and too coordinated for that to be plausible and I would have liked more about that. The bigger issue here for me is just that it kind of lives in the shadow of another recent film about the end of a Patagonian dictatorship: Pablo Larraín’s No, which looked at the plebiscite which ended Augusto Pinochet’s reign in Chile from the perspective of the campaign’s advertising agency. That movie had the more creative angle to take on a story like this and it was also a bit bolder formally with its integration of stock footage and also had a really strong performance by Gael García Bernal at its center. By contrast this movie feels like a more conventional prestige courtroom drama, but that isn’t to diminish its strengths as a decent historical film about an interesting moment in the history of the titular country.
***1/2 out of Five
From 1976 to 1983 Argentina was taken over by a brutal military junta which engaged in a “dirty war” characterized by state terrorism, repression, and “disappearances.” Eventually democracy was restored and that is where this new Amazon produced prestige film Argentina, 1985 picks up and follows Chief Prosecutor Julio César Strassera as he is tasked with prosecuting these former dictators for war crimes in civilian court. This is no easy task as these people still have strong ties to the military and the police and still have their supporters in the public. It’s such a “hot” case that most experienced lawyers don’t want to touch it, forcing Strassera to assemble a team of young law students to act as his assistants. Much of the film is focused on the toll all of this takes on Strassera, who is constantly being threatened by anonymous callers and the like and who also needs to prevent his witnesses from being intimidated. The film’s courtroom scenes are at times wrenching, with witnesses giving detailed accounts of the horrors these dictators put them through, though I would have perhaps liked a bit of a better understanding of some of the details of how Strassera managed to tie all of this to the generals. My understanding is that their main defense was to claim that these actions were undertaken by rogue elements in the military and the crux of the prosecution was in proving that the crimes were too widespread and too coordinated for that to be plausible and I would have liked more about that. The bigger issue here for me is just that it kind of lives in the shadow of another recent film about the end of a Patagonian dictatorship: Pablo Larraín’s No, which looked at the plebiscite which ended Augusto Pinochet’s reign in Chile from the perspective of the campaign’s advertising agency. That movie had the more creative angle to take on a story like this and it was also a bit bolder formally with its integration of stock footage and also had a really strong performance by Gael García Bernal at its center. By contrast this movie feels like a more conventional prestige courtroom drama, but that isn’t to diminish its strengths as a decent historical film about an interesting moment in the history of the titular country.
***1/2 out of Five
