Argentine cinema has been perhaps the most important in Latin America for a long time. Without underestimating the recent achievements of Mexican and Chilean cinema, promoted by figures such as Guillermo Del Toro and Pablo Larraín. So it shouldn’t be so strange that he’s among the favorites for the Oscar for best international film, much less with a cinematic as strong as ‘Argentina 1985’.
Directed by Santiago Miter and starring Ricardo Darín, the film recounts the entire trial that ended with the life sentence of Jorge Rafael Videla, the dictator responsible for a long list of enforced disappearances, torture, murders and a variety of responsible for human rights violations. . It’s a work that not only tells the quest for justice in an evil-stricken country, as Borges described to the military government, but also the need to keep a record of it so it doesn’t happen again.
MAIN PERFORMANCES BY HISTORICAL FIGURES
The truth is that Miter had a very strong cast to portray the story. Beyond Darín, who, like prosecutor Julio Strassera, continues to show that he is one of the best actors in his country and one of the most underrated in the Anglo-Saxon awards season. He is joined by Peter Lanzani, who breaks into the role of assistant prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, and the late Claudio da Passano brilliantly plays playwright Carlos Somigliana.
Surrounded by a group of young actors, the three form the heart of the film and lead us into the darkness of the case they faced. It is that the work of the three, along with that of Mitre, which leaves aside modern cinema’s most experimental choices, is calibrated not to overshadow the extraordinary true story. It’s a complicated job that might fall into the overly sentimentalism of tracks like “Trial at the Chicago 7.”
“ARGENTINA 1985”: HISTORY AS A LEGAL DRAMA
It seems Mitre’s list of influences for this film is closer to ’90s legal dramas like The Cover, Some Good Men, or Legítima Defensa. This makes it one of the most sober works about life under Argentina’s dictatorship, which includes the country’s other two Oscar winners, La historia Oficial (1985, the year of Videla’s trial) and El Secreto de sus ojos“. from 1999, which tells of the work of the public prosecutor’s office in the shadow of the dictatorship.
In fact, every story of Argentina’s dictatorship is so striking that it seems to grab the attention of Academy voters. The story is deeply gruesome and therefore striking, which adds to the Argentine filmmakers’ good eye and has always left a good taste in the mouth when seeking nominations.
THE NEED FOR JUSTICE
It’s worth noting that a film that tells the story of how a dictatorship is brought to justice is especially important as there are three left in Latin America. That of Venezuela, that of Nicaragua and that of Cuba. It’s important because when these go away, and as they all will eventually go away, we need to take Argentina’s example and remember how best to behave.
It is important because here in Spain there are those who are guilty of crimes similar to those reported on the tape and are hiding them so they can get away with it. Making films like Argentina 1985 is a way of drawing attention to the past so as not to repeat it, and for us Latin Americans living in a dictatorship, another way of repeating that phrase that so little Has originality and is so full of power: “Never again”.