Un crimen Argentino (Argentina, 2022)
Un crimen argentino is a police procedural set in 1980s Argentina during the last military dictatorship. It follows the investigation of two representatives of the court as they delve into the disappearance of a prominent businessman, one Gabriel Samid, from the city of Rosario, Santa Fe. The question the film asks is how one can investigate, let alone prosecute, a murder when the state, to justify or dissimulate its own actions, has created a category of person that has no identity. Here I quote Jorge Rafael Videla, 1st President of the National Reorganisation Process from 1976 to 1981: "Frente al desaparecido en tanto éste como tal, es una incógnita el desaparecido. Si el hombre apareciera tendría una tratamiento X, si la aparición se convirtiera en certeza de su fallecimiento tiene un tratamiento Z, pero mientras sea desaparecido no puede tener un tratamiento especial es un incongnita, es un desaparecido, no tiene entidad no está ni muerto ni vivo, está desaparecido." "Faced with the disappeared person, insofar as they are such, the disappeared is an enigma. If the person were to reappear, they would receive treatment X; if their reappearance became the certainty of their death, they would receive treatment Z. But as long as they remain disappeared, they cannot receive any special treatment—they are an enigma, a disappeared person. They have no entity; they are neither dead nor alive, they are disappeared."
However, important as they are, I’m not currently interested in a political or philosophical question, but a filmic one. Un crimen argentino is not a showy film, it doesn’t indulge in virtuosic camera moves or striking cinematography. The film steadily aims for a realist aesthetic, and continuity is rigorously maintained except for a cutaway or two to either a montage that provides expository information or that shows the passage of time.
There are, however, a few instances in which this formal rigour – and here rigour is perhaps too strong a word given the predominance of realist aesthetics in mainstream film – gives way to something a little more suggestive.
The Unmotivated Camera Move
While the camera in Un crimen argentino is almost always mobile it is equally almost always motivated. That is, it either follows some character movement or action, or else it moves to provide some more narrative information. There is one notable instance of an unmotivated camera move which very much draws attention to itself. This occurs towards the end of the film after the body of the missing businessman has been discovered in a massive flowerpot almost completely dissolved with sulfuric acid. In this sequence we see Rivas and his partner, Maria, in bed together. Rivas has just woken up and is lying down facing the camera in the foreground of the shot, and Maria is sitting up smoking, at the background of the shot and facing away from the camera at some 45o. At the beginning of the sequence, Rivas is in focus while Maria is not. The camera is rolled at a 90o angle such that Rivas is vertical in the shot and Maria is horizontal. Rivas then starts to roll over onto his back. As he does this, the camera rolls 90o so that by the time Rivas is on his back, he is now horizontal, and Maria is vertical. The focus also shifts such that by the end of the camera move, Maria is now in focus and Rivas is not. The point of the move is to underscore what Maria next says to Rivas, “"Me voy a la mierda, Antonio. No sé si con vos o no sé adónde, pero yo me voy." “I’m fucking leaving, Antonio. I don’t know if its with you or I don’t know where, but I’m leaving.” After everything Maria has seen with the case, she is done. By the end of it she is “the right way up” and in focus, and, true to her word, we never see her again in the film.
The Match Cut
The film delights in a few symbolic gestures, some of which are genuinely funny, as when Suarez, the judge in charge of the case, suggests to a military counterpart, that the suspect is but one shark swimming in a shoal of other sharks. The camera then cuts to a shot of a green Ford Falcon prowling through the streets of Rosario – the Ford Falcon being the “car of the dictatorship.”
El vehículo oficial de la dictadura es una de las muestras de la estrecha relación entre el gobierno de facto con el gran empresariado nacio
There are a few instances of cross cutting in the film designed to show two strands of the investigation occurring at the same time. The first example is when we cut between a stakeout at a café and a private conversation between the judge, Suarez, and an ex-colleague of his who has some pertinent information. The next is when we cut back and forth between a police raid and a conversation between Rivas and the killer, a lawyer by the name of Marquez. The parallel montage here highlights not only that the investigation is proceeding along multiple pathways, but the difference in the methods used on those pathways – in which quiet, often beneficial conversations are contrasted against the brutal bungling violence of the military. There is one final instance of cross cutting which employs two match cuts to really underscore this point. In what must be one of the many detention/torture centres the military ran in Argentina, we see water poured onto Marquez’ body in anticipation of his being tortured. As the water is poured, the camera cuts to a shot of the investigators pouring out the liquified remains of Samid onto a gurney. We cut back to the detention centre. As the torturers apply the picana, the electric cattle prod used widely by the military during the dictatorship, we cut to a matched shot of a pair of forceps digging into the gloop that used to be Samid. The contrast is not only between two methods of investigations, but two methodologies: one brutal, violent, and ultimately unable to stand up to any scrutiny, the other based in scientific rigour and with the notion of due process at top of mind.
Some Expressionistic Lighting
Like the camera movements, the lighting in Un crimen argentino is almost always motivated. The lighting is often artificial, save perhaps for the daytime exterior sequences, but it always aims for a realist aesthetic. There is one moment, though, that stands out where the lighting seems to take on an expressionistic tone. By the end of the film Marquez has been captured and a confession has been extracted from him by the military. Even though Marquez is now in the hands of the military, the two representatives of the court have continued their investigation because they understand that when the military are gone and when rule of law is returned these prosecutions will need to stand up to scrutiny. They visit Marquez in his cell. Marquez, who has been beaten up and tortured, refuses to acknowledge his crime, and he tells the investigators to take a close look at him because once the military are gone, he is going to sue for false detainment and torture, and that he’ll call the investigators to be witnesses to this. What follows is Marquez’ chilling protestation of his innocence, that the businessman is not dead, because without a body there can’t have been a crime, and that, quoting Videla, the missing person, “no tiene entidad.” “He has no entity.” The lighting in this sequence is dark as might be expected in a torture room commanded by the military. However, there is an element of chiaroscuro to the lighting, particularly on the face of Marquez but also on the faces of the two investigators. Chiaroscuro lighting, especially in noir cinema, with its high contrast between light and dark, reflects the themes of moral ambiguity.
The question I’m left with is whether these brief forays into discontinuity, into unmotivatedness, can contain the meaning the film is interested in imparting; whether they stand out because the rest of the film is so meticulously constructed.