José María Berzosa

This first episode in the series addresses the ostensible normality of reactionary ideology among Chile’s middle class, represented by the Fourth Company of the Fire Department of Santiago. “There are no political prisoners in Chile”, Augusto Pinochet states at the beginning as Berzosa, in a counterpoint that is characteristic in his editing, shows, in a way that is both realist and measured, the painful testimonies of the mothers and wives of those who have disappeared or are prisoners under the dictatorship. In wilful ignorance of such a reality is the happy society under the restored order: the fire chief, Napoleonic and military, declaring himself apolitical like his department, or the landowner and ex-diplomat who renounces his land. In short, a theatre Berzosa exhibits in all its farse and artifice.

In this second episode, different figures explain their political commitment, forming a portrait of Chile’s new ruling class. Monseñor Gilmore, chaplain-general of the Army, speaks about the advantages of the Army teaching young people, while Enrique Ortúzar, president of Chile’s Constitutional Commission in the wake of the coup d’état, describes a particular kind of authority-based democracy. Following these conversations, Berzosa employs a counter-shot: the situation of artists who have remained in Santiago and are under extreme surveillance, a farmer talking about the misery in rural Chile and a  powerful extract of Pablo Neruda reciting his words.

Can a lack of ethics be reconciled with aesthetics? This appears to be the theme of this third episode, in which Berzosa films a grotesque and humorous portrait of three army officers who, along with commander-in-chief Augusto Pinochet, make up the Military Junta. Gustavo Leigh Guzmán, Air Force commander, Navy commander José Toribio Merino, and César Mendoza Durán, chief of Police, are interviewed in their homes alongside their wives, discussing issues of a literary, musical and philosophical nature. The efforts of all three to portray themselves as sensitive dilettantes, mentioning figures such as Picasso and Bach and even showing their artistic creations, reflect how the beginnings of major dictatorships — one such example being a young painter called Adolf Hitler — can be rooted in considerable artistic frustration.

This final episode shows the dictator in all his heroic guises: the peerless army officer, the intrepid explorer, the model citizen, the international geopolitics strategist, the concerned father, the faithful husband. The masks progressively peel away as Berzosa intersperses interviews with the mothers of those who have disappeared under the regime. In a typically Berzosa-esque sequence, we see Pinochet, dressed as a civilian, and his wife, Lucía Hiriart, sat in their home. After discussing film, music and family, the film-maker asks Hiriart: “Does your husband have any faults?”. “No, none”, she replies. “We all have our faults…”. She gives it some thought: “Okay, he can be a little domineering,” she says to the icy smile of the dictator. A simple phrase that dismantles the propaganda around a hero.