Cinema: reflections on Costa Gavras

Achieving homogeneity of thought among the populace is almost always the goal of an autocrat. The means used to attain such a feat often involve imprisonment, re-education, torture, propaganda and outright elimination of ideological opposites. Perhaps no other director has devoted as much time and effort to documenting the abuses of power and those who find themselves on the wrong side of the intellectual divide as Costa Gavras. Gavras, the Greek-born, French-educated director, is the acclaimed, thoroughly politicized filmmaker who rose to fame with Z in 1969.

Retrospectives of the director's work are not uncommon owing to the themes he has addressed, as well as his technical mastery of the film medium. It is through my own personal retrospective that I wish to offer newcomers a resource for approaching his work.

My first encounter with Gavras came about as a teenager when, by chance, my father had selected a videotape of The Music Box from our local video outlet. The Music Box, released in 1989, stars Jessica Lange and the East-German defector Armin Mueller-Stahl in an emotionally charged drama that brings home the theme of disbelief when confronting a family member's grim past. The Music Box is the story of a respected Hungarian immigrant, comfortably settled in the United States, who finds himself accused of wartime atrocities. Inspired by the real-life trials of John Demjanjuk, the Music Box delivers us a compelling narrative in which the themes of family loyalty, dual identity and the human capacity for evil are explored. Although far removed from the stylistically pared-down settings of his previous films, and prone to melodrama, the Music Box is a rewarding spectacle that has reaped deserved acclaim.

To watch Missing (1982) is to be struck by a certain irony. The irony is that the Chile of Missing, so ideologically repugnant to Gavras was the locale used to denounce the extreme right in State of Siege (1972). This, of course was when Chile was under the rule of Pinochet's liberal predecessor Salvador Allende. Unable to film his condemnation of rightist torture squads in authoritarian Uruguay, the home of the Tupamaru rebels whose story inspired the film, Gavras opted for filming it in the socialist experiment of Allende's Chile. To film Missing in Chile years later would have been an impossibility, so the nation of Mexico, then under the rule of the far less dictatorial Portillo, stood in for the Southern Cone nation.

Missing is a success owing not only to the emotional range of Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek's performances, but also for its deft handling of the search for truth in a society where an inquisitive mind represents a menace. The inquisitive mind and the dangers it represents for those who wield power through intimidation are the focus of Z (1969). Z addresses the theme of political assassination in Greece, which had degenerated into a paranoid police state following the seizure of power by its military in 1967.

Politically-charged cinema most certainly did not begin with Gavras; however, he is one of the most capable pioneers within this genre. For that, his work will undoubtedly attract yet another generation of devotees.