Invasion

The screenplay for "Invasion" was written by literary giant Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Boi Cesares (whose short story "Blow-Up", had been made into a film by Michelangelo Antonioni 3 years earlier). Invasion takes place in Buenos Aires, where a clandestine group of friends, businessmen, and enthusiastic youth have joined forces to fight off on invasion of their city by unknown forces; men in tan suits.

Like Jim Jarmusch's "The Limit's Of Control", the film gives us only what precious little information we need to move onto the next scene, like an agent on a mission who can't afford to know too much, so that if captured can't be forced to talk. "Go here", "take him", "good luck", "the rendezvous is at midnight on the docks", or "noon at the cafe", are about as declarative as many of the conversations get, usually issued by an old man at headquarters.

Unlike Jarmusch's cool, collected, calm fest, these guys get down to multiple scenes of shoot-outs, scuffles, and interrogation and torture. Why they are fighting, and who the enemy is, is left unanswered, as is why they don't seek help from the "authorities" or even the common man on the street. The city is being taken over slowly, "the trucks are coming in", is a phrase we keep hearing again and again. Imagine the Matrix, without the kung-fu/sci-fi stuff, where there is an eternal cat and mouse game between the Agents and those resisting the agents.

Erasing the specific nature of the enemy could have a very practical explanation like fear of censorship if they give Them or Us an official title. It could also be Borges and Cesares, after living their multiple disappointing rebellions, revolutions, and coup de tats, were weary of easy or convenient dichotomies. Or perhaps like GK Chesterton said of the Iliad, "Life is a battle", and the war will continue on regardless of which particular players strut the stage in fatigues.

Like the Trojan Army (Borges was a huge fan of the Iliad, and Adventure stories), our heroes are doomed to fail, which only gives their cause and epic and glamorous sheen; the final scene depicts a batch of new recruits standing in line to get guns and begin the cycle anew. It's like an abstract mob-film, where cool and charismatic men, light each other on fire, and insist they will die before they talk. There is a documentary like realness that add a tension and weight to the secret wars, which never seems to spill out into the light of day and attention of the general public.

Much screen time is spent just looking at blackness with only lit faces or ghostly eyes, showing the hero's as much in the dark as we the audience. But heroes they are, self sacrificing, dedicated comrades and friends, that we longer really see in modern action heroes, and their play-by their own rules, "did you have to break so much furniture McGarnical?", escapades. Like real covert ops, they are precise, they are also so casual, and at times defeated looking, you might imagine they do this every weekend; one man wants to know how long the mission will take, because has to be home early to meet his wife.

Though well lit and composed with crisp black and white austerity, there is one "magical realist/fantastique' flourish, when the team leader of the heroes, finds himself in an empty building were dozens and dozens and impossible dozens of men in tan suits, emerge seemingly from nowhere and surround him. He is tortured in a football stadium, where I am told, real dissidents and "traitors" were actually tortured and killed. It' doesn't quite live up the hype of the literary giants behind it, but that's a tall order to fill.

It's an interesting and reserved action film, with some great suspense and encouraging of the same kind of existential reflection that films like "Blow Up" and "Limits Of Control" demand. An obscure, but enjoyable French New Wave inspired, curious allegory from Argentina, about life's struggles which are always in secret, and always endless.

a day after i saw invasion (at tiff) i had already come to take it for granted as a part of the essential canon of 60's film. though the affinities with some new wave and related trends of the period (godard, antonioni, resnais) have been noted- and i would certainly add bunuel to that list- hugo santiago's film adds something decisively different to the mix, something you maybe always unconsciously felt belonged there but wasn't really represented by any particular film or "auteur". unfortunately the original negatives were seized (and presumably destroyed) by the military in the early 70's, and the restored print is variable in quality with shoddy french subtitles over which the English titles are projected in real time. this resulted in many mistakes which threatened to render the story even more mysterious than it was intended to be! someone badly needs to do a new restoration on this one! regardless, invasion is, especially when taken in context (1969!) a remarkable achievement in every way. superb, velvety black-and-white cinematography, fabulous location shooting, brilliant performances, and all that, combined with a meaningful, prescient story of the "inevitable, irresistible invasion" which was shortly to overtake argentina and subsequently all of us... the brutally inhuman men in suits...! the protagonist herrera (lautaro murua) is the quintessential borgesian knife-fighter reconfigured as a gun-toting ruthless thug defending civilization-as-we-know it from the "invaders"... the counter-revolution, as is made clear in the film, remains well below the the radar of the everyday football-obsessed citizen... superb, and more timely than ever!!!

This is great. Full of tension with a sort of po faced over seriousness. Lovely editing and angles. The city looks dour and wonderful.

Haven't a clue what's going on but it's very important and complicated. The working day in nice black and whites. Stylish and urgent. Other reviews here have pointed out that it also, in many ways, anticipates real events in Argentina which I missed of course. Nice film.

Hugo Santiago's 'Invasion' is a film about struggle: the endless struggle of a handful of men against totalitarianism. It illustrates the secret, sometimes vain battle for freedom by depicting a strong, dark and powerful masterpiece with heroic characters who defend their hometowns against mysterious invaders. However, the most striking aspect of the movie is the way it anticipates on History, indeed a decade after the movie was shot, Argentina was to fall in the hands of a cruel military regime. From the electric torture scenes to the stadium ( the very place originally used by the regime to execute the opponents ), everything is unfortunately at the right place. From the artistic point of view, Invasion is beyond reproach, directed by a disciple of Renoir and Antonioni. It really thrills the audience from the beginning to the end; the pace is perfect, action scenes are outstanding ( the overall strategy plan designed by the old man reminded me of Kurosawa's Seven Samourai - Aquilea eventually looks like the small Japanese village). The score is interesting too with eerie noises and a moving tango song whose lyrics are somewhat premonitory. Acting is also amazing, with their cold beauties the characters communicate their fears and hopes which contribute to the 'on the run' atmosphere of the movie. Still, Invasion is neither a documentary nor a propanganda, it is not a political movie either ( at least at first sight ) but it uses the political pattern to deliver a wider message : 'we have to fight but in secret and knowing the fight is endless' Afterall, Invasion is a metaphysical fable, some kind of an Illiade. Cold, pessimistic mysterious but superb, Invasion spawns a reflexion about life,

Jorge Luis Borges was a great writer. Adolfo Bioy Casares was a good writer with infrequent flashes of very good. Occasionally, they wrote together. Curiously, the quality of their joint work always sank lower than the quality of each writer's output; they seemed to cause each other to lower their standards. The story for this movie is an example. It narrates the resistance of a small group against an invasion and takeover of an imaginary country in an abstract, bloodless and totally unrealistic fashion. The dialog has been written by Borges and the director Hugo Santiago. The lines are frequently stilted and literary; a great writer is not necessarily a good screenwriter. The actor's delivery of the dialog tends to the monotonic. The direction is uneven; the movie proceeds briskly at times, but it has very slow stretches. Action scenes are not very believable.

What makes this film watchable is the extraordinary black and white cinematography by Ricardo Aronovich; in spite of its virtuosity it never interferes with the action. After a brilliant career in Argentina Aronovich moved to Europe where he became one of the best cinematographers in the world.

The subject of this film (and some scenes) caught the attention of the military dictatorship that took power in Argentina in 1976. Parts of the original negative were destroyed. The version we watch now is made from the surviving negative and positive copies.