Books, Arts & Manners: Chile Con Carnage

Missing is Costa-Gavras’s latest political thriller, based on Thomas Hauser’s book about the assassination in Chile of Charlie Horman, a young American writer and journalist. It tells mostly about how Beth, Charlie’s wife, and Ed, his father, search for Charlie after his disappearance shortly after the military coup in Chile. Ed Horman is a prosperous businessman, a Christian Scientist, and a conservative; Charlie and Beth’s mildly leftist views are weird, indeed incomprehensible, to him. As he and Beth get the runaround from the American authorities in Chile (the country is never named, but easily identifiable), Ed witnesses more and more killings and other horrors, and as American involvement in local politics becomes clearer and unholier, Ed and Beth get touchingly closer to each other. Charlie’s death is finally confirmed, and Ed and Beth return to the States, where he initiates a lawsuit against 11 Americans who, apparently, contributed to Charlie’s demise. The suit gets nowhere.

The film begins with the announcement that it is a true story. I would assume that a lot of it is, though there are some concessions to cinematic thrillermaking. Not one of the American officials we meet in the film is anything but smarmy, hypocritical, cowardly, or outright sinister; only one female foreign correspondent and one economic advisor to the Ford Foundation prove at all decent or trustworthy, though even they are far too scared to deploy their humanity beyond a reasonably safe point. Of the Chileans, one sees only subordinate figures, but they are sufficient to inspire fear and loathing. Yet Costa-Gavras and his co-scenarist, Donald Stewart, are shrewd enough to stop generally a little short of the worst. Dead bodies lie about plentifully, and torture is hinted at abundantly; but what we see is mostly minor acts of brutality and a pervasive state of terror.

JS

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John Simon

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Missing is Costa-Gavras’s latest political thriller, based on Thomas Hauser’s book about the assassination in Chile of Charlie Horman, a young American writer and journalist. It tells mostly about how Beth, Charlie’s wife, and Ed, his father, search for Charlie after his disappearance shortly after the military coup in Chile. Ed Horman is a prosperous businessman, a Christian Scientist, and a conservative; Charlie and Beth’s mildly leftist views are weird, indeed incomprehensible, to him. As he and Beth get the runaround from the American authorities in Chile (the country is never named, but easily identifiable), Ed witnesses more and more killings and other horrors, and as American involvement in local politics becomes clearer and unholier, Ed and Beth get touchingly closer to each other. Charlie’s death is finally confirmed, and Ed and Beth return to the States, where he initiates a lawsuit against 11 Americans who, apparently, contributed to Charlie’s demise. The suit gets nowhere.

The film begins with the announcement that it is a true story. I would assume that a lot of it is, though there are some concessions to cinematic thrillermaking. Not one of the American officials we meet in the film is anything but smarmy, hypocritical, cowardly, or outright sinister; only one female foreign correspondent and one economic advisor to the Ford Foundation prove at all decent or trustworthy, though even they are far too scared to deploy their humanity beyond a reasonably safe point. Of the Chileans, one sees only subordinate figures, but they are sufficient to inspire fear and loathing. Yet Costa-Gavras and his co-scenarist, Donald Stewart, are shrewd enough to stop generally a little short of the worst. Dead bodies lie about plentifully, and torture is hinted at abundantly; but what we see is mostly minor acts of brutality and a pervasive state of terror.