Missing
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Movie Reviews of Missing
Movie Review: The quiet American strikes again
Summary: 5 Stars
Missing is a 1982 film by Constantin Costa-Gavras (Z, 1969, State of Siege, 1972). All three films are factually based, and present the US role in support of terrorist right wing regimes in, respectively, Chile, Greece and Uruguay.
As a result of the declassification of secret documents authorised by President Clinton this role is now documented comprehensively. Men such as J.D. Rockefeller II and his sons, Henry Kissinger, Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan and Bush (snr) and their administrations and organisations such as the CIA have been shown to have had strong affiliations with the Nazi Party in Germany, ex-Nazis in South America, the Mafia, and several drug cartels. These unholy alliances were apparently undertaken by the US government to combat the threat of Communism during the cold war. With the disintegration of the Communist USSR, it is disquieting to see the present administration in the US taking up the same alliances against a new threat, Islam. Co-incidentally, these alliances offered side benefits: massive profits by US corporations because of unstable economies in South American countries, huge personal fortunes raised by participation in the munitions and drugs trades, a rise in prestige and power of the military establishment, and the bolstering of political popularity by regimes who carried out little positive legislation for their nation. These operations (of course I am not referring to specific instances, but generalising) were taken for security reasons. Hindsight has proven them to be wrong. But those who will not learn from their mistakes are sentenced to repeat them.
However it is not necessary to enter into the details of this background to understand or appreciate this film. To follow the plot, you need to know only that the socialist government of Allende was seen as a new hope for Chile, and attracted idealists from other countries wanting to participate in its social program; that these social changes were undermined by a worldwide inflation in the early 1970s which gave an opportunity for the right wing military opponents of Allende to take control of the country (they had suffered a massive electoral defeat); that the US government was committed to overthrow the socialist regime in Chile and poured 11 million US dollars into the effort, as well as misrepresenting the situation to their electorate and the rest of the world; and that the dictatorship of General Pinochet resulted in 3,000 murders of alleged socialists and the imprisonment and torture of 28,000 more, with US government connivance.
This is what is going on in the background of the film. If it was what the film was about, however, it would be a horrifying diatribe we would be reluctant to listen to or watch.
The film instead is constructed around the amazing acting talents of Jack Lemmon, and he makes the film an overwhelming experience by giving one of his greatest performances. Based on a book called The Execution of Charles Horman, Costa-Gavros' script focuses on the search of Charles Horman's father, Ed (Lemmon) and Charles' wife Beth (Spacek) for the missing writer. The night time sets, with curfew in force, searchlights and helicoptors prowling, and frequent bursts of staccato machine gun fire, create a nightmare, desperate world familiar to all those who have seen Blade Runner.
Throughout the film we are presented with the moral choice various characters make: how far will you go in support of what you believe in? If you believe socialism is ruining the country would you torture and murder socialists? If you think a new order will bring benefit to millions, would you risk your life and spend 17 hours a day bringing out a left wing newspaper? If you think it better that millions suffer to safeguard your own way of life, would you turn a blind eye to terrorism? If you love your son, would you attack your consulate officials for non co-operation in searching for him, and sue your government for complicity in crimes against humanity after his death?(and if you think communism is a totalitarian regime that curbs democratic rights, would you engage in totalitarian means to combat it?)
Because these questions are raised in this political context, it is important to distinguish fact from fiction. The facts presented are accurate, but they serve a dramatic, not documentary, end. The film is both a story of a search for a missing person, with artfully rising suspense and a powerful climax, and a study in relationships, chiefly between father and son, and father and daughter-in-law. Ed Horman only discovers his son after he goes missing, that is his tragedy. He has spent his life not seeing a lot of what he should have seen. His story thus echoes the political point that Costa-Gavras wants to make. It is our political right to be aware of the world we live in; failing that, we inherit a world we don't like at all. Further, there is a hint in the blossoming relationship between Beth and Ed that ideologies are for people, that people are not for ideologies. That no matter what you believe, you should commit to it, and that commitment should never, never, affect your ability to relate to other people in a positive, enhancing way.
Those interested in the topic of this film might also like The Official Story (Luis Puenzo, 1985), concerning General Videla's reign of terror in Argentina. Videla came to power three years after General Pinochet, in 1976, with massive support from President Reagan and his administration, who supplied funds, arms and training for his forces. Over 30,000 people perished, murdered, tortured, exiled or 'disappeared' during Videla's dictatorship. Again the motive was anti-communism: arms from the US, training from ex members of the Nazi party and funds from a mafia organised drug cartel (which was able to set up a profitable business in the country with, ultimately, disastrous results for young people in America). The Official Story stars the great Norma Aleandro, and is concerned with the profitable trade in babies carried out by Videla's regime, whereby political prisoners who were pregnant were delivered of their babies before being executed, and the babies then sold to wealthy childless couples in the administration. Over 500 babies are thought to have been sold in this ghastly trade. The human drama of a marriage that disintegrates under the suspicion that a member of it has been involved in the baby trade is the subject of the film while the political situation forms the background. Again, the moral choices of individuals is focused on: if your wife was desperate for a child, would you supply one if it meant murdering its real mother? Is this a violation of the trust you share with your wife? The film features a stunning performance from Aleandro (an exile).
Movie Review: Propulsive, Real-Life Political Thriller Shows Costa-Gavras and Lemmon at Their Peak
Summary: 5 Stars
Accomplished Greek-French filmmaker Costa-Gavras has a compelling way of bringing the emotional resonance out of stories with overtly political themes. He hits the nail on the head with this searing indictment of American involvement in the 1973 military coup that ejected Allende from power in Chile. Facts are not discretely presented, even the country in which the story takes place is not disclosed (except for specific references to the cities of Santiago and Vina Del Mar). Yet, Costa-Gavras creates an atmosphere of palpable tension that doesn't let up in this 1982 film, and the unraveling mystery at the heart of the movie echoes the unsettling political situation surrounding the characters.
Adapted by Costa-Gavras and Donald Stewart from Thomas Hauser's non-fiction book documenting the true case, the plot focuses on American expatriate Charles Horman whose sudden disappearance in the days after the Pinochet coup brings together two familial adversaries, his wife Beth and his father Ed, who has flown in from New York. Charles and Beth had been leading a vagabond existence with his work in children's animation and their relatively passive support of Allende's reform measures. Charles' back story is revealed in carefully constructed flashback episodes that show him to be curious about the presence of U.S. military personnel in the area. Once he disappears, Ed and Beth seek help from the U.S. Consulate but face a seemingly insurmountable wall of bureaucracy. Frustrated, Ed, a highly conservative Christian Scientist, lashes out at Beth for what he considers her undesirable influence over his son. However, as they absorb the scope of the violence and the culpability of the U.S. government, they bond intractably toward their objective of finding Charles.
For once, Jack Lemmon, unafraid to convey his character's prejudices, is able to use his neurotically coiled energy in a suitable dramatic role as Ed. The result is a startlingly raw performance that ranks among his best. Sissy Spacek is terrific as Beth, though her character does not experience as big an arc of self-revelation. In the elliptical flashback role of Charles, John Shea provides solid support, as do Janice Rule as a political activist and a number of familiar TV faces - Melanie Mayron as friend Terry and David Clennon as U.S. consul Phil Putnam, both from "thirtysomething", and Joe Regalbuto, Frank from "Murphy Brown", playing another Frank, a possible victim of the coup. There are unfortunately no extras with the 2004 DVD.
Movie Review: Costa-Gavras' enduring masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
Costa-Gavras shot his controversial 'State of Siege' in Chile not long before the violent US-backed Allende coup. Maybe it's that familiarity with the locale that makes Costa-Gavras' 'Missing' seem so authentic.
More than just a startling vision of day-to-day life in the aftermath of a violent coup, there's much more of a feeling for the place and what ordinary people lost in the coup. There's a real sense of chaos in its imagery - dead bodies littering the streets as people try to go about their daily business or floating by in rivers, soldiers chasing and shooting at a white horse through deserted streets or diners on a rooftop garden leaving their means to watch a helicopter gunship shoot at unseen curfew violators. The sheer casual and irrational nature of violence ("You Americans always assume there has to be a reason") gives the film a palpable sense of terror and dread: this is a place where even an earthquake can't get people out onto the dangerous streets after curfew.
The fact that this time round Costa-Gavras had a Hollywood budget to play with helps immensely, but he also has a script based around people who aren't defined strictly by their politics - indeed, the movie is basically a search for `a political neophyte' by a gruff and unlikeable conservative (Jack Lemmon, on excellent form) and the missing man's wife (Sissy Spacek), a search that takes in embassies crowded with asylum seekers, morgues with hundreds of bodies piled almost haphazardly and the national football stadium that has been turned into a vast prison/torture chamber/place of execution. It's an outraged film but it's also one aware of its own impotence - this is a journey from hope to bitter and exhausted acceptance that there is nothing that an individual can do in the face of politically expedient mass murder.
It's easily Costa-Gavras' real enduring masterpiece, having lost none of its power more than a quarter of a century on, and its sobering to think that there was a time when movies like this weren't just mainstream releases, they were also big box-office. It's just a shame that Universal's DVD is such a shoddy disc - it doesn't even have a menu page! This is a film that really does deserve the Criterion treatment (which it will finally be getting later in 2008), or a special edition at the very least (there's already one available in France). But buy it anyway for the film itself.
Movie Review: A sense of Being There
Summary: 5 Stars
I was an exchange student in Chile the summer of 1969. There was already plenty of campaign grafitti all over the walls of Santiago. It was easy to tell that the political emotions were high and the eventual winner would probably have no more than a 36% share of the vote. I kept in touch with the politics (although I forgot to sell my few shares of Anaconda before the election). I thought that a democratically elected Marxist president had great potential for international political understanding. However, things took a major turn in 1973.
Costa Gavras was just the director to bring this tale of political terror to the big screen. "Missing" gives us a pretty real sense of what it may have been like in those days of retribution (for lack of a better word). We see the story through the eyes of a father in search of his missing son. The father, played excellently by Jack Lemmon, comes across as either apolitical or conservative. His daughter-in-law, still living in the country she and her husband moved to in the enthusiasm many had for the Allende government, reveals the somewhat naive liberalism of she and her husband. An odd couple (excuse the Lemmon pun), they set out to find their son/husband with the less than competent (or is it less than cooperative) help of the US enbassy officials. The various individuals and attitudes they encounter gives us an idea of the coordinated chaos that the powers that be oversaw. Along their journey, Lemmon gets plenty of insights to the precarious security that exists in the wake of a coup d'etat.
The power of "Missing" is in Costa Gavras's ability to give the viewer a sense of the fear, desperation, exasperation and anger that Lemmon's character goes through. We don't get any advance insight to what happens next and we are waiting for SOMETHING to happen just as the father is. There are some points in which things may seem to slow down but it is purposeful; a reminder that waiting at a time like this is very nerve-wracking.
I went back to Chile in 1985 to visit the family I stayed with. Pinochet was still in power but things had relaxed greatly by then. I expected to hear endless stories about the terror of the early days of Pinochet. Instead I heard endless stories of the economic chaos of the Allende years. It didn't justify what happened in October, 1973, however.
Movie Review: Still timely, gripping political thriller
Summary: 5 Stars
Missing is more timely than ever. As of this writing (December 2004) the notorious Chilean dictator Pinochet is now on trial for crimes against humanity in his native country where, if justice prevails, he will be dealt with harshly. In this film, set in an unnamed country but obviously Chile (the cities of Vina del Mar and Santiago are referred to explicitly), Charlie Horman and his wife Beth have come to live, circa the mid to late 70s, and it is there that Charlie goes missing.
The extreme violence of the regime is depicted well here--people are executed both on- and off-screen--but even more piercing is the intentional, cold callousness of the obviously complicitous Americans with titles--either military or political--who think nothing of mentioning a freight charge to an American who has just recently found out about the death of his son and wants the body sent back to the US.
In probably his best dramatic performance on film, Jack Lemmon portrays Ed Horman, Charlie's father, who, with Beth, initiates a search for his missing son. At first dismissive of Beth's clearly liberal politics, he quickly comes to understand the reason for her cynicism. In the face of harsh indifference, brutal lies, and extreme violence, his humanity emerges and we see a man at the end of his tether expressing what is deepest and truest in his heart.
Sissy Spacek as Beth is also very fine, as is the supporting cast--John Shea as Charlie, Charles Cioffi as the snide Major Towers, Joe Regalbuto as a friend of Charlie's who refuses to accept just how bad things are, and David Clennon as a particularly obnoxious American diplomat. But this is a tour-de-force for Jack Lemmon and he is absolutely riveting.
In this film, Costa-Gavras has gravitated from the somewhat one-dimensional--though groundbreaking--focus in Z on political corruption to political violence that directly impacts the lives of two individuals who respond humanly to it. This gives the film a profound emotional depth that we did not see in Z, and makes it supremely compelling. Though Z is a great film, this, I feel, is far superior; I count it as Costa-Gavras' best, in fact.
Based on true events, Missing is a powerful film that will stand the test of time for decades to come. One of the best films of the 80s--highly recommended.