Missing

Faith in truth is the stated principle, devout businessman and didactic filmmaker chase it down the labyrinth together. "Cheerful little country," Chile after the coup, children playing soccer dispersed by a truckload of soldiers are reflections observed by the American journalist (John Shea). He and the wife (Sissy Spacek) are "just two normal, slightly confused people trying to be connected to the whole damn rotten enchilada," his disappearance is one amid countless in the dictatorial regime. His conservative father (Jack Lemmon) joins the search, at first scornful but gradually shaken by the atrocities approved in the name of "American interests." (Tavernier's The Clockmaker is the groundwork for changing relationships.) "Anti-establishment paranoia" is vindicated by the uncovering of sanguine hands, Costa-Gavras films it not with the charged outrage of earlier indictments but with a palpable sense of sadness. The war zone the land has become is sketched with a matter-of-factness that shades into surrealism, bodies in the streets are a common sight while bridal mannequins and runaway horses pop up during curfew. Contrasting witnesses, boasting operatives, Nixon portraits in offices occupied by mealy-mouthed weasels. Guilt like fear, says the missus, "given to us for survival, not destruction." A musique concrète of constant gunfire, helicopters by the balcony (cf. Losey's Figures in a Landscape). "Los perdidos," a nation's collective basement filled with their corpses, a makeshift morgue to go with the stadium's makeshift prison camp. Dolorous illumination comes at last, the paterfamilias can't quite respond to his government's own accusation of complacency. "We're going home." There are attentive evaluations by Stone (Salvador) and Loach (Hidden Agenda), though the ultimate compliment remains the U.S. State Department's strenuous denial of involvement. Cinematography by Ricardo Aronovich. With Melanie Mayron, Janice Rule, David Clennon, Charles Cioffi, Richard Venture, Jerry Hardin, and Richard Bradford.