Directed by Manuela Martelli
Chile, 2022
The ninety second opening of 1976 is a masterclass of cinematic exposition. Carmen (Aline Küppenheim), a Chilean woman of wealth, pearls, and poise, sits in a paint shop selecting colours for her summer beach house. As a touch of blue is added to a can of salmon-pink paint, the camera lingers on the mixing machine. We hear a muffled shout and the machine stops:
Grab her!
Let me go…
Shut up, motherfucker.
I am Marcella Ulloa! Let go of me!
Then, silence. A single drop of pink paint splashes onto Carmen’s blue court shoe. When she goes to her car, as she opens the door she finds a lone, dirty brown shoe, belonging perhaps to the woman who has just been ‘disappeared’.
The feature debut of writer-director Manuela Martinelli, 1976 is a film awash with symbolism and allusion. Set three years into the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, Chile is beset by an authoritarian rule that would last 17 years: a world of secret police and informants, there is an ever-present threat of violence. Thousands killed, and hundreds of thousands forced into exile, the national sports stadium has become a de facto concentration camp.
This is a political thriller without guns or car chases. It is the story of Carmen, former flight attendant, now grandmother, whose current focus lies in overseeing the renovations of her beach house. An unlikely political dissident. Her husband, Miguel (Alejandro Goic), is a doctor and hospital director with clear connections to the Pinochet regime. Carmen spends her free time volunteering with a local priest, Father Sanchez (Hugo Medina), reading to the elderly and the blind.
She also has skills in first aid which is why Sanchez asks for her help in nursing a young man seeking sanctuary in the church, supposedly injured while stealing food. But Sanchez is lying – it turns out that the man, Elías (Nicolás Sepúlveda), is no common thief but a political fugitive with a gunshot wound. Somewhat reluctantly, she is drawn in, engaging in subterfuge to get hold of dressings and antibiotics at first from her husband and when this arouses suspicion, she turns to the local veterinary clinic. And it doesn’t end there… as Elías recovers Carmen becomes involved in a plan to get him to safety. And at what risk – she is not only endangering herself, but her husband and her family. As her grandchildren gambol around the summer house Carmen is making furtive phone calls and heading off on suspicious, convoluted bus journeys.
From the film’s opening moments, Carmen remains an enigmatic presence – her motivation for deciding to act is never made explicit. We learn that she has a history of mental illness – a colleague of her husband suggests that he double her anti-anxiety medicine. Carmen once had her sights set on a career in medicine but was pressured by her father to give this up and marry instead. Miguel pointedly notes that she is a woman ‘with her head in the clouds’, a tacit acknowledgement of a nonconformist streak.
The paranoid atmosphere is pervasive. A click on her telephone line suggests it might be tapped. A car behind her on the road flashes its headlights repeatedly – is the threat real, or perhaps imagined? A day at the beach with her grandchildren, only to come across a woman’s body washed ashore ratchets up the tension. Then, she returns to her car to find that her glove compartment has been broken into, and her car registration and identity papers strewn across the seats. Manuela Martinelli and her cinematographer, Soledad Rodríguez, craft a staging that is visually stylish but not stylised. That style markedly contrasts with composer Mariá Portugal’s abrasive electronic drone score – the effect is deeply unsettling. Hitchcock would be impressed.
A central scene in the film sees Carmen onboard a yacht – their ‘beautiful little toy’ – with her husband and his self-satisfied medical cronies. She is forced to listen as they castigate those who oppose the regime:
Chileans have a mediocre mind and in a mediocre country you need to be governed by a strong hand.
The expression on Carmen’s face speaks multitudes. Moments later, she leans over the side of the boat and vomits into the sea.
It is an outstanding performance by Aline Küppenheim. When we first meet her at the paint shop, she is a character portrayed in broad brushstrokes – a woman of primary shades. But as 1976 reaches its end, her wary, weary pallor no longer masks the undertones, the subtle variations in her psyche. She is preparing to ice the birthday cake for her granddaughter when her husband calls her out of the kitchen. A besuited man, apparently a neighbour, stands at the doorway holding her missing citizenship papers – missing after the car break-in. In a striking moment of latent violence, he grabs her chin and asks, “What were they doing there?” Carmen hurriedly comes up with a muddled excuse. The camera draws into his face in a tight closeup:
Try to be more careful next time. You won’t always be this lucky.
The deliberate pacing and subdued colours place 1976 alongside those classic paranoid thrillers of the 70s, The Parallax View and of course The Conversation with the late, great Gene Hackman - S
Reids’ Results (out of 100)
C - 73
T - 76
N - 70
S - 79
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Coming next… 12 Angry Men(1957)
As an activist, I've known fear, so when I watched this I related, and was disturbed for days after. Great debut.