Review: Argentina, 1985 (2022)
Inspiring dramatization of the post-dictatorship 'Trials of the Juntas'
Argentina, 1985 (2022)
Directed by Santiago Mitre
Written by Mitre and Mariano Llinás
“Argentina, 1985” is a narrative feature that dramatizes the 1985 trial in Buenos Aires of the military officers who waged what is called the Dirty War against the citizens of Argentina from 1976-1983. During that period, with the support of the U.S. as part of its Cold War foreign policy, the officers governed the country as an authoritarian junta.1 The trial of the junta leaders seen in the film, known in that country as the Trial of the Juntas, was to that date the largest prosecution of war crimes since the Nuremberg trials.
The movie focuses on Julio César Strassera, the federal prosecutor charged with the prosecution of the junta, and on his assistant, Luis Moreno Ocampo. Strassera (Ricardo Darín) is a highly experienced and well-connected lawyer who watched the violence of the Dirty War from a relatively powerless position. He knows that the trial represents not only the first but possibly the last opportunity to try the members of the junta for their crimes. But aside from Moreno Ocampo, no other experienced lawyers volunteered to assist in the case, leading Strassera and Moreno Ocampo to recruit young legal clerks in their 20s as their team. They became known as Strassera’s kids (“chicos”)2. (The movie leaves out the civil service workers in Strassera’s office who also worked on the trial, except for his office secretary.)
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In the film, we see Strassera struggling to accept the responsibility of his assignment, then performing his job with all the caginess and professionalism that it requires. We also see the effect on his wife and two children. It’s not lost on the viewer that the family lives in a large, comfortable apartment they have clearly occupied for several years, including during the dictatorship. Strassera’s conduct at that time is something he’s clearly sensitive about. While he questions his conscience, it’s true — as he says in the film, and also true historically — that he did take actions to mitigate the violence and kidnappings, including filing writs of habeas corpus on behalf of the families of the dissapeared.3
As with any movie that centers on a trial, “Argentina, 1985” builds tension up to and through the trial itself. To prepare the prosecution, Strassera’s young staff are shown gathering testimony from victims and victims’ families. This research4 results in 709 separate cases being presented as evidence for the prosecution and in court testimony by victims’ family members. As was true in real life, this searing testimony, broadcast live on TV and radio, was the first time that Argentinians heard the crimes of the junta being discussed publicly at all, much less details about the kidnappings, rapes, forced births, torture, and execution of individuals.
Probably more than anything else, these broadcasts were crucial in swaying public opinion against the defendants. To illustrate this cinematically, the film uses the character of Moreno Ocampo’s mother, an upper-class woman who is a personal acquaintance of Jorge Rafael Videla, the central figure of the junta. Until the testimony was broadcast, she had defended the actions of the junta and accepted its party line that any violence committed was a part of a “war against subversion.” The broadcast accounts of the details of the violence change her mind, and she comes to believe in the prosecution’s fight for justice. (This really happened.5)
The climax of the film comes when Strassera delivers his ten-minute-long closing argument. The film includes almost the entirety of this speech, addressed to the judges hearing the case and ending thus:
Your Honors, I wish to waive any claim to originality in closing this motion. I wish to use a phrase that is not my own because it already belongs to all the Argentine people.
Your Honors: 'Never again'.
As in reality, the film shows the courtroom audience leaping to its feet in an ovation, and the defendants being led out, being treated for the first time to a demonstration of public feeling against them. (You can view the real speech in its entirety, and the ovation, at https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/juliocesarstrasseraclosingargument.htm.)
I hesitate to call this film a fictionalized version of the events that it depicts, because by all accounts it hews pretty close to what actually happened. Of course, as with any narrative feature based on real events, the film’s writers created some framing devices and dramatized some peripheral events. These include scenes showing Strassera’s family as well as a comedic sequence showing the recruitment and interviewing of the young assistants. A comparison between this film and similar ones, such as 1976’s “All the President’s Men,” 2019’s “The Report” (which examines the preparation by Senate staff of evidence of the abuses at Abu Gharib) or 2022’s “She Said,” shows the necessity of these fictional moments to personalize the characters and give the audience some relief from the parade of facts.
In any case, the power of “Argentina, 1985” derives from how true it is, as much as the performances by Ricardo Darín as Strassera, Peter Lanzani as Moreno Ocampo, and Laura Paredes as one of the witnesses testifying to the junta’s crimes. The film also gains credibility by having as one of its writers Mariano Llinás, the founder of anarchist film collective El Pampero Cine. While the criticisms of the film deserve attention, as does any good-faith criticism, I found “Argentina, 1985” to be a powerful reminder of both the history of the Dirty War and the fight for justice for its victims.
The anti-Communist policy of the U.S. during the Cold War included support for many authoritarian dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere, including Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Iran, Indonesia, Vietnam, Burma, Spain, and Portugal. These efforts, many led by the C.I.A., included overthrowing democratically elected governments as well as a training facility for Latin American military officers called the School of the Americas, an infamous institution that still exists under another name. See:
Some remained critical of Strassera’s actions during the dictatorship. For example:
One of the most common criticisms of the movie is that it does not properly center the actions of the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (Spanish acronym CONADEP), which worked during the Dirty War at great risk, and afterward, to gather testimonies and other documentation such as the locations of torture centers. For example, see “Luis Brandoni criticó ‘Argentina, 1985’: "Hay algunas omisiones muy graves," Perfíl, Oct. 26, 2022
"Lo que no se ve en Argentina, 1985': la historia real de los 'Chicos' de Strassera y cómo están hoy," Clarín, Nov. 26, 2022: "A lo largo del juicio, la sociedad fue conociendo con detalle los horrores que había cometido la dictadura. Esto hizo que hasta la madre de Moreno Ocampo, que defendía a Jorge Rafael Videla, cambiara su postura."