Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.5

The Official Story Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 13, 2018

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 fractious sociopolitical climate of Argentina in the early to mid-eighties is hinted at early on in The Official Story courtesy of some comments by some of Alicia’s students (some of whom are typical “young revolutionary” types), as well as perhaps a bit more subliminally in such aspects as Alicia’s housekeeper and nanny being continually late in arriving to take care of Gaby since public transit is in such disarray. But there’s a distinct if almost subliminal “separation” detailed the keeps the upper crust Ibáñezes from totally realizing the havoc that is being wreaked by the government among the “less fortunate”. In fact, the entire subtext of The Official Story might be boiled down to Alicia becoming (to utilized a contemporary term of art) “woke”.

While anti-government opinions are espoused by a couple of supporting characters as The Official Story starts to develop an increasing feeling of unrest, it’s the arrival (or perhaps more accurately reappearance) of Ana (Chunchuna Villafañe), a longtime friend of Alicia’s, that kickstarts Alicia’s recognition that all is indeed not right in Argentina and that she herself may be complicit in one of the horrors of the right wing regime. Ana, while perhaps not a “real” desaparecido, has been through hell due to her romantic entanglement with a supposed “dissident”, and she relays to Alicia some of the troubling (to put it mildly) activities she witnessed while being interrogated. That includes the blatant stealing of children (some newborn) from women deemed “treasonous” (or something similar). That of course starts to fray Alicia’s nerves over Gaby’s “provenance”, a subject Roberto (who arranged the adoption) seems overly defensive about getting into.

What’s commendable about The Official Story is how it traffics in what almost might be thought of as a “very special Lifetime” made for television movie ambience, without ever tipping over into the histrionics or hysteria that those efforts often provide. Alicia’s slow realization that her husband may not be telling her the truth, and her further investigations which bring her into contact with a woman who may be an actual relative of Gaby’s are both handled in an almost verité style that only adds to the emotional impact of the film. While there is a showdown of sorts in the late going, the film’s climax is actually open to interpretation. Will Alicia return Gaby to the family Alicia suspects is the girl’s natural one? Or will things continue as they are, however dysfunctional that may be? The Official Story seems to suggest that becoming “woke” is not an end in and of itself, and is in fact only a waystop on a longer, perhaps even more tortured, journey.

The Official Story Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

The Official Story Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• New Four Part Interview with Director Luis Puenzo on the Making of The Official Story is a really fascinating and in depth quartet of features covering everything from the sociopolitical climate of Argentina to the shoot. Kind of interestingly, these appear to be French in origin. The four parts are:

  A Scenario Under High Voltage (1080p; 11:10)

  Filming History (1080p; 9:30)

  The Cast (1080p; 8:07)

  Negation and Revelation (1080p; 8:47)

• New Featurette on the Restoration of The Official Story (1080p; 2:03) documents what looks like a pretty extensive restoration that was evidently undertaken in 2015 judging by some of the text included.


• Re-Release Trailer (1080p; 1:37)

The Official Story Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.