All entries for Wednesday 08 June 2005

Imagining Argentina

Writing about web page http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0314197/

This morning I'm really tired. It might be because I over exerted myself by ambitiously doing a day's work and then going swimming, followed by a mad dash home to get to my friend's house for dinner. However, I think it's the film I watched with Hannah and Christina last night that's disturbed my awakeness.

We watched 'Imagining Argentina'. We rented it thinking that the nice title would give us some other version of the Motorcycle Diaries or along those lines. In 3 weeks Christina's leaving here for good (sob sob) and going to Argentina for a year. So we thought it'd be great to see how beautiful the place is. Pah! Well, actually, yes it's really beautiful, I'd love to go there. But THIS film was based on the regime of 1976–83 when tens of thousands of people 'disappeared' and never returned. The film was quite graphic – at least in implication and quickly cut away scenes – but definitely deserving of more than its 15 rating. Emma Thompson spends most of the film being tortured, she then has to listen to her daughter being raped…. it's not nice…

Scarily – we were alive during this regime. We all learned about the Holocaust in school, yet this period of our immediate history is virtually unknown. Why? There were definite Holocaust links, even a few swastikas thrown in here and there. So why don't GCSE or A Level history courses extend to post-nazi regimes? It's not as if recent history is too late to study – I remember one bit of my GCSE history leading all the way up to the present day! Does anyone know if this stuff is covered on any curriculum? Surely it's done in some courses at university?

I'm disturbed by this film. And I'm grateful to its existence. I don't think the critics rated it much, but I think that 3 of us rating it highly competes with at least one critic (especially if you knew how damn clever Hannah and Christina are!).

Christina, by the way, still cannot wait to get to Buenos Aires! This is a story about governments – not people or places.

: 08 Jun 2005 09:20 |  Comments (7) |  Close comments |  Report a problem