Chronicle of an Escape (review)
Chronicle of an Escape (Argentina 2006, 103 min. dir: Israel Adrian Caetano, cast: Rodrigo de la Serna, Nazareno Casero, Lautaro Delgado, Matias Marmorato).
Why does torture inflame our imagination in ways love never does? Thanks to a 1976 coup by its military leaders, little Argentina is up there with Nazi Germany in the torture Olympics. Of course the number of Argentine films about this era is nowhere near the number about Nazi Germany, but they are all first rate.
Chronicle of an Escape (also called Cronica de Una Fuga and Buenos Aires 1977) is up there with the best about this purge like The Official Story, Garage Olimpo, and The Secret in their Eyes. Based on true stories told by the victims, this film is the story of a group of young men held in an old mansion in the suburbs of Buenos Aires and subjected to endless torture until they managed a daring escape.
At one point the lead torturer remarks, “This is how the FBI started.” Not exactly correct, but the resemblance to CIA black prisons is very clear. The “Dirty War” in Argentina went on from 1976 to 1983. It was methodical, government sponsored violence and torture to rid Argentina of any leftist or Communist elements. And estimated 13000 people were killed. A favorite way to dispatch prisoners was to drug them, put them on airplanes, and dump them from altitude into the sea (see Garage Olimpo).
This kind of fun didn’t stop until the military government overstepped its limits and invaded the Falkland Islands. The British promptly responded, drove out the peasant soldiers and their portenos leaders, and reduced their army to scrap metal.
So why is it we love torture movies? Because sadists are so much more imaginative than nice people. One of the coolest scenes in Chronicle of an Escape is stripping the prisoners naked, chaining them to their beds, standing on top of them while moping them with disinfectant. Who could invent stuff like this but a gifted sadist?









