State of Siege (Etat de siege)
Directed by Costa-Gavras
Written by Franco Salinas; original scenario by Costa-Gavras and Salinas
1972/France/Italy/West Germany
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel
Tupamaro militant: {repeated exchange that occurs between the leader and five different militants who are asked to vote on killing a hostage] I’ve received the report.
Tupamaro leader: So, you know the situation. This is not a personal problem. It was never that. It’s a political problem. Yes or no?
I was underwhelmed with this Costa-Gavras entry. There’s all the politics but without the energy.
The setting is Montevideo, Uruguay in August of 1969. The names have been changed but this film is based on and takes sides on an historical incident involving the kidnap and murder of an American USAID worker named Dan Motreoni, who was training the Uruguayan police.
After brief framing device beginning the story at its end with a funeral, we segue into flashback which occupies most of the film. Yves Montand plays Motreoni’s alter-ego American Philip Michael Santori, who lives the diplomatic lifestyle with his wife and several children. At the time, the Tupamaros were somewhat low-key leftist revolutionaries who used a Robin Hood technique to attract followers. They stole the money to distribute to the poor from robbing banks or carjacking motorists at gunpoint.
The Uruguayan Government was determined to stamp out any opposition. Santori had been training the civil police in counter-insurgency techniques. The Tupamaros resorted to kidnapping, murder, and assassination. The kidnappers of Santori wanted to use him in an exchange for a number of Tupamaro prisoners. They stage a mock trial in which they repeatedly try to get Santori to confess to war crimes. All this is pretty polite as they plan to keep Santori healthy for the exchange. But his fate will be governed by cold political calculation. With Renato Salvatore as a police official.
I have a particular interest in the history of Uruguay, having worked in Montevideo in the early 90’s, and still this movie failed to grab me. As a PS to the story, after much bloodshed the Tupamaros were banned and in 1973 a military coup ended liberal democracy until it was restored in 1985. Costa-Gavras is best when he gives us characters to care about. The problem here maybe simply that Yves Montand is the central character and the only one we know a little about. But he is clearly supposed to be the enemy and the teacher of unspeakable torture practices. To add to that, there is entirely too much talking. On the plus side, it has a nice Mikis Theodorakis score.
