7.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
After the end of the Dirty War, a high school teacher sets out to find out who the mother of her adopted daughter is.
Starring: Norma Aleandro, Héctor Alterio, Analia Castro, Chunchuna VillafañeForeign | 100% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Spanish: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
There’s a lot of newsprint and bandwidth being utilized these days documenting the separation of children from their parents over contentious border crossings by people attempting to enter the United States, but have you ever heard of a person’s own government taking his or her child as a part of a governmental crackdown that was politically (as opposed to societally) motivated? Now there has also been a lot of newsprint and bandwidth devoted to so-called secret “renditions” by the United States in its war on terrorism, but could you imagine your own government taking your offspring as part of that effort? That’s the underlying subject of the riveting if unsettling The Official Story, the 1985 Argentinian film which ended up capturing that year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. While many of us who live in the United States are perhaps blissfully unaware (ignorant?) of the traumas that have visited relatively nearby neighboring nations over the past several decades, Argentina’s political upheavals seem to be particularly obscure to many (I know they were to me until I started doing background research after having watched the film in an attempt to read up a bit before writing this review). Kind of incredibly, during Argentina’s so-called “Dirty War” which was part of an ultra right wing strategy called “Operation Condor” over 30,000 (!) people were “disappeared”, with at least some of those kind of strangely being children. Can a child be a dissident? That might seem to be a salient question, but it’s almost irrelevant, since right wing military juntas operating in Argentina seemed to be motivated mostly by an eagerness to tamp down any simmering discontent, and so perhaps “removing” a child from a supposedly left leaning home was seen as a “proper” way to enforce group think. All of this subtext is kind of doled out discursively in The Official Story, and it takes a while to realize that a sweet little girl named Gaby (Analia Castro), the child of history teacher Alicia Marnet de Ibáñez (Norma Aleandro) and government official Roberto Ibáñez (Héctor Alterio), is actually adopted and may indeed be a desaparecido, the almost poetic sounding Spanish term for someone who has been “disappeared”.
The Official Story is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Film Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. As evidenced by the restoration featurette included on the Blu-ray disc as a supplement, The Official Story was apparently in pretty rough condition, especially for an Academy Award (and lots of other awards) winning feature of relatively recent origin. Almost all of the at times pretty significant damage like tears, emulsion issues, and smaller items like nicks and scratches, have been totally eliminated or at least ameliorated in the restoration. There's also an appealing organic look with a well resolved and natural looking grain field, though there are occasional very minor issues with some kinds of yellowish splotchy moments (totally removed from any expected moments like opticals). The two places I had just minor issues with were with regard to saturation and (especially) contrast. Things look just slightly brown a lot of the time, and contrast just looked a tad anemic to me at times, especially in some of the more dimly lit interior moments. As can perhaps be gleaned from some of the screenshots accompanying this review, director Luis Puenzo and cinematographer Félix Monti favor some dewy framings with backgrounds or even the sides of frames out of focus, something that can tend to add a sense of softness to the image. Still, detail levels are routinely excellent, especially in close-ups, and considering what was apparently a source element in pretty bad condition, the results are on the heroic side.
The Official Story features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that springs to life in some of the urban environments, with well placed ambient environmental effects, as well as a couple of intense moments in Alicia's classroom, but which tends to settle down in terms of surround activity in terms of some of the equally intense but smaller scale dialogue scenes. Dialogue is always rendered cleanly and clearly and there are no apparent age related issues analogous to some of the damage seen in the video department on the restoration featurette.
- A Scenario Under High Voltage (1080p; 11:10)
- Filming History (1080p; 9:30)
- The Cast (1080p; 8:07)
- Negation and Revelation (1080p; 8:47)
The Official Story is ultimately devastating from an emotional perspective, but for clueless Americans like myself, it also serves as a potent history lesson. Cohen has once again released an important film on Blu-ray with solid technical merits and some appealing supplements. Highly recommended.
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