The official story movie Rating:
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Official Story
Running time 112 minutes Country Argentina Language Spanish The Official Story : La historia oficial is a 1985 directed by and written by Puenzo and. The film won best foreign film Oscar and whilst those awards are often poor arbiters of taste I suspect they got it right in 1985, only two years after the dictatorship had fallen. When Alicia begins to wonder about the identity of the little girl's birth parents, she finds herself suspecting that her daughter may be the child of people abducted or killed by the government's brutal crackdown on leftist groups. As such, it has become a staple in many Latin American culture courses throughout the U. He always reacts badly when Alicia inquires into Gaby's parentage.
Political arrogance and heartlessness may have taken a child from one family and assigned it to another, but at some deep and fundamental level, these two women understand each other. He also comes into friction with his liberal father and brother, who frown on his ties to the ruling conservative military elite and argue in favor of. Social and Cultural Circularity in Social and Cultural Circularity in La historia oficial California State University-Bakersfield The 1985 film La historia oficial The Official Story , directed by Luis Puenzo from a script by Puenzo and Aida Bortnik, can serve as an excellent point of departure for the study of recent Argentine culture. Puenzo's film is unwaveringly committed to human rights, yet it imposes no ideology or doctrine. The Subculture of Violence: Towards an Integrated Theory in Criminology. By the conclusion of the film, not a single positive male role model has emerged among these characters. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
All these men essentially treat her like a child and refuse to take her seriously. Although the female characters march openly in the streets, such actions often lead to resistance and setbacks. It can, perhaps, be argued that social benefit may be derived from their passionate search, both in history and in the present, for the truth. Lethargy and stagnation have become hallmarks of Latin American political culture, and the film, owing to its circularity, can be interpreted as suggesting that there is little hope for change. Marguerite Feitlowitz in her exhaustive study of the period of the Dirty War, A Lexicon of Terror, notes that most pregnant detainees were killed after giving birth and their babies were sold to the families of the military or police. They cannot escape their origins.
Throughout the movie, Alicia becomes more and more curious and uneasy about the real origin of her beloved child. Alicia meets an old woman who may, or may not, be the grandmother of the adopted daughter. Caught between her students and Ana, Alicia is trapped by the truth, unable to escape. As the film concludes, Alicia once again is alone and facing personal uncertainty. By the end of the film, not one of the characters has unambiguously succeeded. The two women become close, in a strange way.
Since Roberto is aggressively evasive, this involves tracking down scraps of hospital records and witnesses to Gaby's birth. As the film opens we see Roberto as an upper-middle-class gentleman who has successfully climbed the socioeconomic ladder owing to his connections with the military leadership. In her increasingly obsessed and desperate search, Alicia meets a member of the. Following a tradition of historiographical debate on past heroes and tyrants, the film portends continued chaos and failure. When Alicia begins to wonder about the identity of the little girl's birth parents, she finds herself suspecting that her daughter may be the child of people abducted or killed by the government's brutal crackdown on leftist groups. Works Cited Bortnik, Aida, and Luis Puenzo. She traveled to first and later.
The Official Story (La historia oficial, Argentina 1985)
While on the surface the female characters seem more positive than their male counterparts, a close examination yields equally inauspicious results. She says that while she was held captive, she witnessed pregnant women leave to give birth but return without their babies, whom she believes were sold to rich couples. She could tell them nothing. Alicia increasingly wonders about Gaby's origins and Alicia asks questions about Gaby's birth, a topic her husband has told her to ignore. Roberto has defined himself by his actions and has shown that he has not been able to overcome his own origins.
The film's final shot shows Gaby sitting in a wicker rocking chair at her adopted grandparents' house, continuing to sing. Read on for a listing of streaming and cable services - including rental, purchase, and subscription alternatives - along with the availability of 'The Official Story' on each platform. Alicia Maquet, a high school history teacher, and her husband, Roberto Ibañez, a government official, live in with their adopted daughter, Gaby, 5. They have an adopted daughter named Gaby. In one of the most powerful scenes in the movie, she takes down the clothing her daughter came dressed in, and touches it gently, and we can read her mind: She is thinking that her daughter's natural mother was the person who put these clothes on the baby girl. But other than showing the innately base nature of most characters and events, nothing has really been accomplished and no one is better off.
She tells Alicia that her lover was a leftist opponent of the government. Last accessed: May 13, 2013. For example, in addition to being used in two courses given here by the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at California State University, Bakersfield, a quick perusal of the internet reveals that the film is also being used in courses at Miracosta Community College in California , Salisbury State University in Maryland , and University College of London. On his journey, he teams up with Ruth, a loveable sheep who has lost her flock and Dave, a dove with lofty aspirations. Turning detective she embarks on a hunt to find Gaby's real mother, or to at least determine what happened to her. This is particularly evident in their treatment of the homosexual student, MartÃn Cullen, when roll is called in the first class meeting. At an early dinner-party scene one woman says that women should never allow their husbands to speak of politics at the table.
The Official Story (La historia oficial, Argentina 1985)
Increasing Alicia's unease is her high school history class. Some of the key moments in the film come as we watch Aleandro and realize what must be taking place inside her mind, and inside her conscience. It is a political, not an intellectual, recognition which panders to the machista tactics of the students. In Sony Pictures Animation's The Star, a small but brave donkey named Bo yearns for a life beyond his daily grind at the village mill. By contrast, Alicia, who is of upper-middle-class Creole origin, sips eggnog with her friend Ana, and tries to imagine what it would be like to get drunk on it. BenÃtez makes constant sexual innuendoes and even playfully asks to go to bed with her.
And thus the film concludes. The answer is woven in social class behavior. Cinebooks: Foreign Films, McPherson's Publishing: 1989, page 132. However, most researchers accept that machismo plays an unusually important role in social and political activities in Latin America. Alicia asks why they celebrate the day they brought her home rather than the day she was born, and whether or not Roberto actually met Gaby's mother. Alicia brings Sara home to meet Roberto, and he becomes furious.
