La noche de los lápices

I have seen this movie only twice, and the last time was at least ten years ago, but the memory has stayed with me. As my country becomes more repressed and dictatorial, this film has come back to haunt me.

The events start out very simply but under a paranoid regime, quickly escalate to a point that must have been unimaginable even to those living in Argentina at that time. When I first saw it, my heart ached for those children and their families caught up in a situation that was hard for me to imagine; now it seems closer than I could ever have dreamed.

The very simplicity of this film and its straightforward telling of the story of these bright and idealistic teenagers is all the more powerful for its lack of embellishment. There is no need to beat up the story and its hand-held cameras and lack of sophisticated lighting or makeup has the effect of breaking through the fourth wall and making us participants in the unfolding drama. We can't get away but neither can we help, and our powerlessness reflects that of the children and their families.

It should be mandatory viewing for all those who think "it can't happen here".

To Deny our past, sometimes means to be ashamed of it. In Marychase's words, I can find only a feeling like this. As in my home country, Italy, in these years a lot of people try to deny the atrocities of Mussolini's dictatorship, I can see that in Argentina there are people that don't trust the slaughters committed by their military government during the seventies. This movie is poetic, sad, tragic but, I think, is very close to the truth. It's a movie, of course, with a plot, screenplay,...in a movie you can't necessarily see the whole story of a class of students. But what you see in it is something strong, hard and...unbelievable. And that's for some people don't want to believe it. Don't want to accept it. But it was true, sadly... And another shame regarding this movie is that's very hard to find it on DVD!!!

A few years after the fall of the military dictatorship, the survivor Pablo Díaz brought to light one of the events that would end up leaving a mark in Argentine history. La Noche De Los Lápices is remembered by most as one of the most tragic events in Argentina, causing the dictatorship to be labeled as a semi-equivalent of the Third Reich. The film was made to reflect what Díaz suffered in his days in captivity and try to leave a message about why a dictatorship should never be accepted. There are many questions when comparing the film with the events of the dictatorship and even more so when the statements of those who lived at that time are included.

To begin with, the film itself functions as a critique of military fascism and manages to tell a heartbreaking story that touches the most sensitive ones. The moments where the prisoners are witnessed manage to generate a disturbing and uncomfortable feeling. Many of the characters are young people with whom you can empathize and even feel sorry for them. The film manages to be a promising dramatic story in that sense. The quality of the film on an artistic level may not be the best, especially speaking of a film made in a country where it was about 10 or 20 years behind compared to Hollywood. But the context that this film offers is undoubtedly more relevant than the quality itself.

Héctor preferred to give more priority to the captives and that was beneficial in making the film very touching and tragic to watch. Now, when the time comes to analyze it with real-life events, a couple of issues arise that make La Noche De Los Lápices a film that works much better as a fictional story than as a historical event. This is due to the statements of those who lived during the dictatorship. While many claim that the dictatorship was a reign of terror, others who lived at the time claim that it is an exaggeration that distorts the reality of the events. They assure that they never suffered the horrors that have been narrated and that the dictatorship allowed them to study and work peacefully. Therefore, it raises the suspicion that what the film intends to narrate is only superficial and does not reflect what really happened. Some maintain that both this film and other media have only distorted the events of the dictatorship. Part of these statements is due to the fact that there were people who supported the dictatorship and if we take into account the anarchy and acts of terrorism caused by the Montoneros that took place after Perón's death, the military was absolutely right to apply cohesion. Juan Manuel De Rosas had done the same thing, but the possibility that the dictatorship has crossed certain limits is not ruled out. Even so, it cannot be confirmed whether all the horrors that occurred were real because there is always the possibility that some facts have been distorted. A disputed part is whether there were really 30,000 missing. While official sources say yes, others argue that this is false and that in reality there were fewer. A statement like this is considered a fallacy in Argentina, but how can you be so sure if that number is true or false? It is even speculated that Las Madres De Plaza De Mayo lied about that number just to collect the subsidiary.

According to certain sources, it is estimated that there were only 10 of the missing students. Some of them may have been involved in a political movement that could be considered subversive or the others were only kidnapped by mistake for the simple fact of being linked to a friend who might have been involved in a match without knowing it. Although The Mothers of Plaza De Mayo claim that their children were innocent, the reality is that possibly some of their children were not completely innocent. It was quite obvious that Claudia was a communist and that made her an easy target for the government of that time. This was also enough for the other young people to be suspected of being communists or Montoneros. This being the case, since the majority of the disappeared belonged more to the working class group, the young students were nothing more than collateral damage. Said damage should not have been so relevant, but Pablo's statements became significant for Las Madres and that would end up being used to be part of the fall of the dictatorship. There is also a whole discussion about whether the military was really guilty of the events, because others argue that it was actually the police responsible for the kidnappings. The film even raises this suspicion when the first kidnappings occur. This is also debatable because the police and military were linked to La Triple A during the government of Isabel Perón.

I have always known of the existence of this film, but avoided it through many years due to the heartbreaking intense scenes I knew it contained. This year we are remembering in Argentina the thirtieth anniversary of the terrible dictatorship, so the film was shown at my high school and I could see it for the first time. There are not enough words to express how I felt; imagining I could have been one of the victims if I had lived thirty years ago. I am definitely against this dictatorship, and I admire all the kidnapped and disappeared guys' mothers, who continue struggling to find their sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters. But besides this, I think the interesting side of the film is that despite our political positions (as I'd previously said, mine is against this dictatorship) we can be sure that everything that's happened to these students is TERRIBLE. Terrible because they were standing up for their ideas, they were asking for a decrease in the students' bus ticket price. Whatever our political position is, we cannot deny the fact that everyone has their right to be judged as a human being. The very talented actors let us see, feel and listen how badly, unfairly and terribly those students were taken away from their homes and relatives; tortured to insanity, rapped and killed with no mercy on 1976. I recommend this film to everyone who would like to know what happened. The film only shows one episode of the whole horrible dictatorship. There were about 30.000 disappeared people between those years, not only students but also Jewish people, artists, politicians, journalists... and many more. La Noche De Los Lápices retells one of the -if not the most- horrible and terrible episode during the dictatorship. As an Argentinean I can tell you all that this film touched my heart and made me cry so hard I could hardly watch it through the tears at times. In spite of the pain the film may provoke, it is a "must" for all those people who ever had a dream, an ideal, a wish. Knowing, by listening to my parents, by reading books and by watching this film, the atrocities occurred that night and every night and every day during the dictatorship make my heart jump and my vocal chords shout as loud as I can: "NEVERMORE". Thank you for reading.

This movie is not for the faint hearted, but it's the most realistic one I have ever seen about the brutality of a military dictatorship. But what I like most is the description of the friendship of college students who, despite emprisonmente and tortures, keep their dignity and their desire to struggle jointly for a better world. A movie which should be watched by every apathic teenager - the shock may really make him/her mature his/her views and attitudes.