“There’s one thing that’s not clear to me,” says the woman.
—Silvia, please… Don’t put me in a bad mood, come on -replies the man.
—I don’t understand if you’re like this…
-Silvia.
—…because you are afraid that the “thing” will not be done.
Sylvia, please!
—Or because you are afraid that the «thing» will be done […]. I think what happens is that you’re shit on your legs.
“Of course I’m shitty on my feet.” Of course!
This is a fictional conversation, based on real events, which takes place in Buenos Aires, in the living room of a middle-class apartment, between an ordinary couple. The “thing” they’re arguing about could be a professional swerve, a momentous operation (financial or open heart), or even, in a twisted way, they could be dealing with the eventuality of their own divorce. However, they are talking about the imminence of a trial, about the first time in world history that a civilian court condemned a military dictatorship.
Dialogue belongs to the movie ‘Argentina, 1985’, of director Santiago Mitre, that the Amazon Prime Video platform premiered on Friday night. I stayed up until so many watching it. Again the actor Ricardo Darin he embroiders it: he is splendid in the role of Julio Cesar Strassera, the prosecutor who dared to expose the atrocities of the Argentine military dictatorship (1976-1983) and managed to put the tyrants on the bench.
The gravitation of the world
Related news
What does a normal man do when such a weight falls on him? Well, gorge yourself on coffee, smoke like a rat, listen over and over again to the overture to Wagner’s ‘Tannhäuser’, and push forward, even if you’re scared shitless. In a very short time, just 17 weeks, Strassera and Luis Moreno Ocampo managed to assemble a team of young people, without burdens of political affiliation, to help them comb Argentina from top to bottom in order to gather witnesses against the military junta.
The best of ‘Argentina, 1985’ is the epic of the gray man, a court official, a hero without a statue or a bronze horse, a hero against the grain who put his chest up, but who would not be so heroic without his family, without that companion (played by the actress Alexandra Flechner) that spurs him on, that challenges him, that accompanies him without being a mere extra. And then, the Greek choir of Argentine society, the democratic consensus that generated the government of Raúl Alfonsín. Actually, it is not Strassera who writes the final argument, but a collective hand: “Sadism is not a political ideology or a war strategy, but a moral perversion.” A very timely movie. talk about democracy again right now, when its values are threatened.