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State of Siege [VHS]

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This is an unbelievable film which takes place during the Uruguayan military dictatorship of the 1970's. Specifically, the storyline depicts the actions of Dan Mitrione, a US torture specialist sent to Uruguay to train police and military personnel. Inevitably, it leads to his murder by the Tupamaros (left-wing freedom-fighters). The film is moving and stuns the viewer with the cold harsh reality of what really happened in Uruguay. In fact, the Uruguayan regime banned this film because it exposed the true face of the dictatoriship.

I highly recommed this film. It was especially moving to me because it gave me a clearer perspective of what my family went through during this atrocious period in Uruguayan history.

This film is extremely hard to find in the US, so grab a copy if you find one. It is also known as "Estado de sitio" and "Etat de siege". (I must reiterate the fact that the original reviewer is wrong - he is thinking of the movie "Z")

I was a student at Indiana University, majoring in political science (comparative politics)in 1975. We reviewed this movie for a Latin American Political Systems class because the movie was based on the activities of a police official from Gary, Indiana. So, for the person writing the review preceding this one you might need to check your facts about the movie "not" being historically based.
A must see for insight into the workings of organizatons such as the CIA, the USAID, the NED and even PEACECORP.

This 1973 film is set in Uruguay. There's a revolution going on. An American, played by Yves Montand, had been kidnapped and murdered by the Tupamaro guerillas. What follows is a flashback on the seven days leading up to this. Mostly, it focuses on the American's interrogation. Gradually, the audience learns that he has been sent there by the American government to teach torture to the Uruguayan police.

Directed by Costa-Gavras, the tone of the film is that of a thriller, with broad sweeps of action and cross cutting between characters. There's very little historical base for all this, just the immediacy of the moment-by-moment tension. The filmmaker clearly favors the guerillas and their attempt to topple their corrupt government. But the story is less about these political ideas than an attack on American imperialism and complicity with the government.

Viewed from the 2002 perspective, the question of whether these guerillas are terrorists or freedom fighters surfaces. They've targeted their actions towards a particular person who they know is responsible for heinous deeds, not the general public. But yet they have a political agenda that they are trying to push through violent means. Certainly, the film makes the viewer think seriously about this.

The film is too long. And it's in French with English subtitles even though it takes place in South America where people speak Spanish. Yves Montand is a fine actor and plays his role well. He keeps his composure throughout, even though he was aware of the sensitive situation he was in. For me, this challenged the film's authenticity, as did the French language. I therefore found it impossible to be emotionally moved by his plight. The message therefore, which must have been shocking to 1973 audiences, was an unmasking of the United States' complicity with dictatorships in Latin America.

Despite its flaws, I'm glad this film exists. It brings something important to the public. It certainly piqued my interest in Latin America. Personally, I'm always surprised when people are so shocked about government misdeeds. Americans are idealists. We've been brought up to believe in freedom and democracy. Problem is we thought that achieving these goals were easy. There're not

The fillm is worth seeing, particularly for a historical perspective. It's all about its message, which is an important one. I recommend it for this reason.

Costas-Gravas'1973 film STATE OF SIEGE suffers from one overwhelming defect: it was produced before the most damning evidence against Mitrione came to light. But then, the Tupameros who kidnapped and ultimately executed him also lacked that evidence, as did the author of the best book concerning him in English, A.J. Langguth's HIDDEN TERRORS- at least until it was ready to go to press in 1978. Langguth notes the difference between the real Mitrione and the character who represents him in the film, Santore, played by Yves Montand. "Montand was slim and continental; he smoked cigarettes. Mitrione was midwestern and corpulent; he had puffed, occasionally, on cigars. He also criticizes Costas-Gravas for "including every undocumented rumor about Mitrione in the film," which is indeed one of the film's weaknesses, for being undocumented, the crimes of Mitrione are not presented very convincingly or linked directly to him. But Langguth is unjust in blaming Costas-Gravas on this score, because the filmmakers did not know, any more than had Langguth himself when he originally wrote his book, that the most damning accusation was true.
When one reads Langguth's account of the interrogation of Mitrione by a member of the Tumpameros, which takes up all of Chapter 9 of his book, one is struck by the incredibly naive, young and gullible nature of these people. Far from being the organized urban guerillas they are portrayed as being in the film, they come across in this account almost as flower children. They were woefully unprepared. The interrogator, although he spoke English and had lived in the US, was not even able to correctly pronounce the word "torture", which after all was the matter at issue, and had to rely upon Mitrione to help him out! One wonders how these people could have gotten up the courage to execute Mitrione after the Uruguayan government refused (at Nixon's insistence) to release 150 political prisoners in exchange for his life. But then, they seem to have been a bit confused concerning their goals. Freeing 150 prisoners would only have helped those 150-- it would not have solved the problem of US-supported repression in Latin America.
So how should the Tupameros have gone about solving that problem? First of all, they should have prepared the case against Mitrione more carefully, so that instead of the amiable chat related in Langguth's book, their interrogation would have been hard-hitting. Along with Mitrione, they should have captured a US journalist, not intending to harm him or her, as a witness. The interrogator should have come in with all the evidence he or she could gather about Mitrione, and with the goal of discrediting him, and thus US policy. He should have collected a number of Mitrione's victims, as well as-- if it had only been possible-- one other, all-important person, with evidence which constituted the "smoking gun". These should at first have been kept out of sight, in an adjacent room. The interrogator should have read the accusations against him, and then the accusers would be brought in, one by one. As it would no doubt be painful for the ones who had been tortured to recount their experiences in Mitrione's presence, they would have been asked to write their testimony ahead of time and simply read it. Then Mitrione would be given a chance to confirm or deny the charges. Even if he denied them, the sight of his victims and their accounts would have been damning.
And then the Tupameros should have led in their star witness, a Cuban named Manual Hevia Coscuelluela. Mitrione would have known this man as a CIA agent, allowed him in on his torture "classes", and confided his true feelings to him. What he would not have known was that Hevia was actually working for Castro-- he was a double agent. In 1978 he published PASSAPORTE 11133: OCHO ANOS CON LA CIA, which is not available in English translation. Despite the author's undeniable political bias, two reputable Americans-- the journalist Lannguth and the scholar Alfred W. McCoy, author of A QUESTION OF TORTURE: CIA METHODS OF INTERROGATION FROM THE COLD WAR TO THE WAR ON TERROR, have accepted his account as authentic. Furthermore, it is supported by the testimony of the former Uruguayan Chief of Police Intelligence, Alejandro Otrero, who was no Communist. It was the CIA who had trained Mitrione, although he was not officially working for the Agency, and this methods were straight out of the 1963 KUBARK MANUAL OF INTERROGATION. Hevia should have looked Mitrione and asked, "Señnor Mitrione, do you remember me?"
Confused, not fully realizing where Hevia's real sympathies lay, Mitrione would probably have answered "Yes".
"I attended your class on interrogation did I not? Did you not personally expound to me your views on the 'art' of interrogation?" MItrione would hardly have been able to deny it. And then, right there on camera, with the American journalist taking notes, Hevia would have begun his account of these experiences. "Your torture demonstration utilized four Uruguayan beggars, one of them a woman, who had committed no crime but were merely swept off the street to suit your purposes. You used them to demonstrate the effects of different voltages on different parts of the human body, and a drug which causes vomiting. They all died. You tortured them to death, Señor Mitrione. And then later, you related to me your philosopy of interrogation, which involved torture and beatings-- before, during and after the interrogation-- not to obtain information which could save lives but to punish those who dared to criticize the government. Proudly you told me, 'In my profession, I'm the best.' You called your 'profession' interrogation. I think most of the civilized world would have called it simply 'torture'."
After this film was shown around the world, and the journalist's report was published, I think that even if Nixon had continued to oppose the exchange of 150 prisoners for Mitrione's life, and Mitrione had been executed as he in fact was, the president would have felt it politically unwise to send the commemorative wreathe that he did when Mitrione's body was brought home to Indiana for burial.

This is a story more Americans should know about, especially now with the evidence of U.S. implementation of torture in Abu Ghraib (Iraq) and Guantamo (Cuba). This video makes it clear that torture has been a commonplace practice in US foreign policy. This movie tells the story of how Dan Mitrione (he's given another name in the film) was sent to Uruguay to teach the police of the Uruguayan dictatorship to torture "leftist radicals." According to some testimonies, in order to teach his techniques, he used homeless indigents as guinea pigs and tortured them to death. He was captured by the Tupamaro (a left-wing guerrilla group) and finally executed when the government refused to make the group's demands. The movie was filmed in Chile a year before the Pinochet coup. It is in French and was not widely circulated in the U.S. (for clearly evident reasons).

When I was editing a magazine, the only review I ever regretted publishing was of this film: I watched it only hours before the deadline and my review was based on my immediate impressions, when this is a film that really needs time to sink in. Partially it's because there is so much information thrown at the audience but also because it's one of those films that doesn't wear its humanity on its sleeve, and it takes a while for its full effect to really permeate.

The film's structure is shifting and driven by events rather than character - it begins with roadblocks and house-to-house searches before the discovery of the body of an American 'aid' worker (a quietly impressive Yves Montand in a complete reversal of his role in Z), then moves back from his funeral to his kidnapping, the gradual realisation from the press that he was rather more important than that and only some half an hour into the film introduces him as a character through a series of interrogations. Hopes are raised and dashed, the corruption of a dictatorship masquerading as a democracy is briefly threatened with exposure, American foreign policy motives debated (aid agencies being an excellent way of discovery the weaknesses of Latin American countries) and gradually the futility of the kidnapping and the inevitable murder become apparent as both kidnappers and victim come to realise that he is worth more to the government dead than alive.

All of this is played out with a number of memorable scenes (not least Montand's realisation that he is going to be killed in the film's most human moment, all the more so for being played with cold logic), some black humour (the taxi driver who has had his cab expropriated by terrorist before and knows the drill, the police childishly giving each other electric shocks with torture equipment or the businessman ignoring an escaped bound-and-gagged kidnap victim on his way to work) and a great eye for details (the too-expensive watch on a vegetable seller revealing him as a secret policeman). While the film lacks the immediacy of Z and the emotion of Missing, Costa-Gavras brings an overwhelming sense of impotence to the actions of both sides and adopts an interesting visual approach in the many scenes shot from rooftops looking down on the police and army about their dirty work, constantly panning and backtracking to reveal new details in every corner, giving a sense of omnipresent chaos and subjugation. It's genuinely impressive stuff, and it's also intriguing to note the film's location - it was shot in Chile not long before the violent US-backed Allende coup. Maybe it's that familiarity with the locale that makes Costa-Gavras' later Missing seem so authentic.

On a historical note, this was the film that George Stevens Jr. and Charlton Heston successfully banned, initially from opening the Kennedy Center but eventually, such was the fallout, from US cinemas (it premiered on TV instead). The reason given was that the film 'encouraged acts of terrorism,' something which is patently absurd - the film very clearly and unequivocally reaches the conclusion that the torturer's murder is a backward and counterproductive step. It seems all the more hypocritical considering the Kennedy family's own financial and political support for terrorist groups such as the IRA, not to mention the large number of pro-IRA films (and even, in the 80s, pro Taliban and Al Quedah films) that have played the same venue without any protest from Messrs Stevens or Heston.

As another reviewer noted, this is an important film, one based on fact. It shows a "traffic expert", played by Yves Montland, going to a South American country to "assist" in traffic, but in reality, he is a CIA operative specialising in torture squads, trained by the US. He is kidnapped and held for ransom by leftist factions, the government refuses to negotiate with them, and he ends up getting killed. There is a scene where operatives torture live subjects on stage in front of the South American's military. It's an extraordinarily difficult scene to watch, but it is very powerful and is not done for shock value. The film is a bitter condemnation of American involvement in Latin America. It shows that the US government (and quite a lot of other governments...the French did this in Algeria) tortures people, so the Abu Ghraib scandal wasn't that surprising. The film isn't as good as Z, Costa-Gavras's first political film, but it's definitely worth watching and searching out.

This film is not "Z", another great film by Costa Gravas. "Z" takes place in Greece, and "State of Siege" takes place in Latin America. Both films are highly political. I believe that "Z" is the superior film, but Costa-Gravas is a master. I hope it will be re-released soon.

The film "State of Siege" by Costa Gavras is as relevant today as the day it first came out. This film is a retelling of foreign Governments violent take over South American countries in the late 60s and early 70s. Much of these facts ca also be found in the book The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents by John Dinges. A must see thriller that reveals the struggle in Latin America by a group of individuals who named themselves after Tupac Amaru the Great Inca Guerilla warrior who fought against the Spanish to free Peru. The Tupamaros history is well represented in this film but you won't find a DVD or reasonable priced copy of it in the US for various political reasons. I suggest Brazil or Europe.

I will not tell the story of this film, because it tells one of the most terrifying stories of our history, full of suspense and played with most excellent actors. The title is wrong. the title of the original film is simply "Z". It is a way of censoring this film of keeping it out of stock and changing its name. the title which contains just one letter, you see it correctly: Z, is a key part of this piece of the fifth art.