Missing
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Movie Reviews of Missing
Movie Review: Great, sobering and educational film
Summary: 5 Stars
Despite the lack of DVD extras, this film is 5 stars. The acting of Lemon and Spacek is great. I highly recommend it.Movie Review: Chile's 9/11
Summary: 5 Stars
Chile... another victim on a 9/11... this time in 1973... the main reason... U.S. Interests. Over 3,000 DEAD!Movie Review: This was an awsome quality picture and dvd.
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie was so intriguing I couldn't turn away and it was in wonderful condition.Movie Review: Missing
Summary: 4 Stars
During the Cold War (1945-1990) it was the policy of successive US governments to maintain authoritarian right-wing governments in power all around the world if there was a possibility that they might be replaced by one from the left, democratic or otherwise. As the US ambassador in this film reminds us `we act in the interests of the United States', not in the interests of the country which happens to be suffering under a dictatorship. We can accept this on an intellectual level - how else can the US government establishment act - but in this movie Costa-Gavras uses his very considerable skills as a film-maker to rouse even diehard conservatives to anger over the methods used to ensure Pax Americana.
He does this by dramatizing the real-life story of one of their number, Ed Holman (Jack Lemmon), a businessman from New York and a Christian Scientist with faith in Truth, into the aftermath of a military coup in an unnamed South American country with the capital of Santiago. His son Charles (John Shea), a vaguely left-wing journalist and writer, living in the city with his wife Beth (Sissy Spacek), has disappeared after being arrested a few days after the coup and carted off to a makeshift concentration camp in the National Stadium. Initially, Ed believes the people at the American consulate and embassy really are there to help him, but it soon turns out they have an agenda of their own. Ed and his son's wife start out on bad terms but Ed comes to appreciate her bravery in the face of a very unstable situation. He also comes to realize the moral worth of his son, who he had previously regarded as a bit of a playboy, much as he had loved him.
What "Missing" cannot say, though it says a lot, is that the country it portrays is Chile in the first days of the unelected reign of Pinochet. What it does say, much of which has been corroborated by recently unclassified documents, is that the United States, led by the statesmanship of Henry Kissinger, supported Pinochet's coup and toppling of a democratically elected regime because they were not friendly enough to "American interests." The bottom line, as the movie makes inarguably clear, is that Pinochet was propped up into power largely thanks to the United States; the blood of thousands of Chileans is thus partially on our hands. This is the larger political point of the film. Until our government owns up to this, one of the most abominable and least-discussed crimes of the Nixon administration, the film "Missing," despite being a fictional take on true events, will be an enormously important document. This is art so close to politics that there's almost no art there. But it still must be seen; the message is too important. All Americans need to confront this episode in our past and come to terms with the fact that our government is a democracy only up to a point. Beyond that point, there are decisions made that we have no control over, no knowledge of, but nonetheless result in horrific events.
Costa-Gavras sketches a Santiago beyond all nightmares, so hellish that it simply had to be true. With almost constant gunfire and monstrosities going on in plain view, we watch Chileans suffer enormously under the strain and stress. The film is an exercise in impotence, de-humanization. Ed Holman (Jack Lemmon), in one of his most courageous performances, has the humility to offer an utterly normal American man's reaction to all this. First he trusts his government, and then, as he realizes that they are at fault for his son's death, he simply implodes. He makes threats but we are instantly told they will achieve nothing. He is even reprimanded by the American officials responsible; his son should have not been a "snoop": "you play with fire, you get burned." He crumples, worn down by a world more brutal than imaginable. It is the price we pay, the film seems to say, for living in a safe, wealthy country like America: this blood on our hands that we don't ever think about. And then, if we are forced to confront it, our own ignorance leaves us too weak to deal with it.
Ed Holman's character's impotence is matched by that of his son's, in his arrest and death. This is one of the bleakest films I have ever seen on the subject of individuality in the face of the state. Chile is meant to stand both for the 3rd world and America- both at once, complicit in this mini-Holocaust. His son is a decent guy, totally harmless, attempting to "be connected to the whole enchilada," as his wife puts it, but certainly no revolutionary. But what does this life, this human being who has lived with integrity, matter when bulldozed by the sweep of a machine-like government? Indeed, the US officials who pretend to help Ed Holman are truly cogs; emotionless, deadpan, their portrayal is surely propagandistic- the politicos of our worst fears. But the film's resonance is more the possibility that this was true; it seems likely, given what is now known of Nixon's administration. What other sort of people could have knowingly perpetrated such monstrosities besides Eichmanns, empty of soul or conscience, pure puppets?
As I said, there is ultimately little art in this film. It is certainly not about the triumph of the human spirit, as the battle is already lost before Ed Holman gets to Chile. No, it is more about the total negation of the human spirit, and body, for that matter, in the face of the indomitable state. Problematic as it may be, this art document leaves a strictly political aftertaste, because it so convincingly asks the question: why, as a country, have we not come to terms with the fact that our government is responsible for events like this, time and time again?
Movie Review: Crises--Both Political And Spiritual
Summary: 4 Stars
I have not read the source book for this 1982 Costa-Gavras political film, but it would appear that not too many liberties were taken with the actual events on which MISSING is based. At least, one can guess as much since the film is as full of random twists and turns as real life is. A more calculated filmmaker would probably have "distilled" the facts of the story down more, you know, to get the "essential truth of the events," or, more honestly, to make for a more steamlined, evenly paced (and hence, more marketable) movie. That is, of course, not the way Costa-Gavras works, and his adherence to the facts (at least as he understands them) is an admirable trait. For once, you are not tempted to snicker when you learn that a film was "inspired by actual events."
It's probably not too surprising, then, that the narrative was not altered to make for a "bigger" ending. A father's search for his missing son in bloody, post-Allende Chile, does not end with the discovery of a corpse, or with a dramatic confession on the part of the wrongdoers or their allies. Word is gradually leaked to the grieving all-American dad, joined in the search by his courageous, vaguely countercultural daughter-in-law, that his son was killed only a few days after the junta came to power. And when that truth comes out, it is not denied by the American authorities who had ostensibly been assisting the duo in their search.
Somehow the body is located and, months later, returned to the family in the US. By that time, the body is too decomposed for an autopsy to yield any authoritative results and the newly "politicized" dad is thwarted in his attempts to sue US authorities for the wrongful death of his son. (It would appear that the vengeance that remained to him is the publication and eventual filmization of his book--which, one hopes, may have provided him some way of honoring his son in death and some satisfaction that guilty parties had been, at least, publicly named).
So MISSING would appear to be an honest and heartfelt movie. It is not, however, without its flaws. The film makes much of the inherent conflict between the button-downed, Christian Scientist dad and his irreverent, hippie-ish daughter-in-law. Whatever the real-life relationship may have been, the film parlays it into a more traditional "teaming of opposites" cinematic trope. Troupers Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek give the script their all, and oft times the honesty is there. Other times, their steady bickering comes across as the standard screenwriters take on "intergenerational warfare."
A few other crucial moments ring false too. An exchange between Lemmon and US officials wherein the latter virtually admit their involvement, seem to justify their support of the coup as a means of preserving the US's "damn fine way of life" is both cliched and dramatically off beat. I'm not sure if any such passage appeared in the book, but whatever the case, the movie version of that encounter needed a much lighter hand.
One opportunity that seems to have been wasted in the film is the significance of Jack Lemmon's character's devout faith in Christian Science. When asked by one of the American officials about his beliefs, Lemmon replies that it's about "faith...in the truth." That may not be such a horrible summation of one of Christian Science's basic tenets, but here it is used, for dramatic effect, as a signal that the protagonist will prove to be relentless in his search for the truth about his son's disappearance.
His devotion to the faith also provides the filmmaker with a shorthand explanation for the father's seemingly entrenched conservatism. I would not dispute that many Christian Scientists lean a bit right of center, politically. Even when that's the case, however, CS is fundmentally different from the hardline social conservatism found in Christian fundamentalism, say. According to the Church's teaching, political conflict--like all human discord and disease--is essentially a misperception of humankind's true nature as a spiritual, non-material being. War, strife, and bloody revolution ultimately have no spiritual reality: they are, essentially, all part of the "Adam dream," and ultimately illusory.
Had the father's inner spiritual conflict been played out more in this movie, it could have made for some riveting moments, I'm sure. In order for him to become "radicalized" or "politicized" at all, he would have to come to question basic tenets of his deeply held faith. It is almost certainly something of an oversimplification to suggest that a devout "Scientist" would have to deny the truth his "mortal senses" are screaming at him, but he would certainly have to see his son's disappearance, ultimately, as one more apparent human evil in need of spiritual healing.
That he cannot, that he must engage in earthly conflict with malevolent political forces suggests a profound spiritual crisis that could have been fascinating to see at least suggested...if not fully played out. Lemmon's character seems, of necessity perhaps, to be abandoning his church's fundamental teaching that "divine love has always met and will always meet every human need" to draw the conclusion sometimes a man has to take a stand and fight a very real--very earthbound--battle against human evil.
Not easy to portray on screen, but even hinted at, that spiritual crisis would have added yet another dimension to an already worthy film.