It’s not a big scene, just an important man walking in the door. “First of all, I want to say thank you,” he says, shaking hands with Julio Strassera, Argentina’s chief prosecutor. “What you did gave courage to many.” Strassera listens wordlessly as he puffs on his cigarette.
His narrowed eyes and his body seem to disappear behind the huge glasses and one of the robocop-style men’s suits of the eighties; the hair is slicked back. The whole man appears armored but fragile, alert as a lizard. “Thank you” and “I appreciate it,” he says, while the visitor tells him that his work is considered historic.
The visitor naturally wants something from him. He comes on behalf of the president and asks on his behalf that the big court case that Strassera is preparing be called off – historically or not. A scene that really happened in Argentina in 1985, two years after the end of the military dictatorship. When it was still unclear whether the crimes of this regime would ever be dealt with in court.
Argentina’s democracy was still shaky back then, and you could feel the army breathing down your neck. But now their commanders are to be accused of torture and kidnapping, and they do not recognize the court. A highly dangerous situation: If the trial takes place and the military feels cornered, there could be more bloodshed. But if it doesn’t happen, the commanders of terror remain above the law. Federal Attorney Julio Strassera, then in his early fifties, was under enormous pressure from all sides. But he will lead the process – and surpass himself in the process.
Nevertheless: The film “Argentina, 1985”, which is now running on Amazon Prime Video, is not a heroic story. That’s why you approach its essence through the many small, not at all boastfully staged scenes like the one just described, in which director Santiago Miter does the same as his main character Julio Strassera and like Ricardo Darín, who plays Strassera – outstandingly: He holds back, puts himself at the service of the cause.
He kept silent during the dictatorship, otherwise he wouldn’t have held this post
What aren’t court dramas usually for catwalks! Studios love the genre because it’s cheap to produce and the actors show up well in a confined space while firing off glowing speeches. This Strassera, however, is not a man of big words, he is a crouched bureaucrat who – rightly – fears for his safety and that of his family. In one scene he says about himself that history is not written by men like him. He was silent during the dictatorship, otherwise he would not have held this post. But there are forces of good in and around him that give the film a burgeoning lightness.
Strassera, for example, returns home one evening, brooding as usual, the phone rings, he picks it up. What he hears confirms his worst fears: the anonymous caller threatens to kill him and his two children. Strassera definitely wants to keep the children out of it. “Only the two of us answer the phone,” he calls to his wife when he has hung up. But she is busily marching through the picture in the background, apparently busy with something else. She asks whether that was the “danger type” again. Oh, he’s been calling all day. Doesn’t he have anything better to do?
Young lawyers against old terror generals – the prosecutors in “Argentinia, 1985”.
(Photo: Amazon Studios/Prime Video)
There is help everywhere, and alongside cowardice there is also a great deal of courage. Strassera needs a team to gather evidence against the commanders. Who should help him? The police are too close to the military. So Strassera and a friend go through the eligible magistrates, sorting one candidate after the other into the categories of those who want to stay out, the too old, the already dead, the fascists and the “super-fascists”, only to end up being unnerved sigh. Until they come up with the idea of bringing in young people who have plans for this country.
The team that was formed in this way wants to question as many of the victims as possible in order to show how systematically torture and murder was carried out: the flood of material method. Here, too, director Santiago Miter follows his modestly working protagonist. He wants, it seems, above all to show what happened back then. The victims have their say as witnesses in court, and original recordings from the courtroom are repeatedly inserted into the re-enacted real reports. The material wins against the evil: It is not so much the system of crimes obviously ordered from above that is decisive in the end, but that the public hears, day after day, what inhumanities were committed during the dictatorship. The support for the military among the population is gradually crumbling.
A truly democratic film is not anti-curious
“Argentina, 1985” is a courageous, optimistic and, in its own way, heroic plea for the power of storytelling and film. Director Santiago Miter trusts in his means so completely that he refrains from all sensationalism, but without denying himself or his main character a powerful, tearful speech at the end. It is a democratic film about a democracy finding itself, which makes the constellations of people and events visible, the disappeared, the invisible wounds. As a democratic film, however, it is not anti-challenge either. What is at stake here should touch and reach everyone.
“Nunca más”, says prosecutor Julio Strassera at the end of his plea, “never again”. There follows a moment of silence in which he, the staid officer, takes off his boxy glasses and narrows his eyes, then original footage of the courtroom clapping can be seen, teary-eyed people rising from the chairs shouting and cheering, music starts, “nunca más”, you want to get up.
Argentina, 1985, 2022 – Directed by Santiago Miter. Book: Mariano Llinás, Santiago Mitre. Camera: Javier Julia. Editing: Andrés P. Estrada. Music: Pedro Osuna. With: Ricardo Darín, Juan Pedro Lanzani, Alejandra Flechner, Norman Briski. Amazon Prime, 140 minutes. Streaming start: 10/21/2022.