Death and the Maiden: The Effects of Chilian Dictatorship

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In a not determined country of Latin America,Chile or any other country that has suffered the consequences of a dictatorship lives Paulina and Gerardo, her husband. She is a woman who survived the tortures of an already overcome dictatorship; it was then when, Gerardo Escobar was a student and a publishing leader of a clandestine publication. Paulina dealt with the pain without betraying her boyfriend as the torturers were claiming. Now she lives with her fighting partner (Gerardo), in a beach house, completely isolated, close to the cliff. Escobar, now judge of the republic, has been named in a commission to investigate the deaths occured during the past regime. Fate propitiates that Roberto Miranda, the doctor entrusted to maintain alive the victims until they were confessing and who at the same time condemned them to the worst of hells, comes one night to the house of the cliff. She(it) recognizes his(her,your) voice and decides to make him confess, in an imitation of judgment(reason), looking that the truth emerges and this way probably his(her,your) soul recovers the peace that has lost. This one is the history based on a play of the Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman, who opened our new cycle " The pardon, humm! Almost always so difficult … ".
And really, the pardon is a concept which complexity is demonstrated from the same attempt of defining it. This way it was verified during the conversation later(posterior) to the movie. What is to excuse? Does to excuse mean to forget? Evidently not. What does need to excuse? There occurs some interior transformation in whom he(she) asks for the pardon and in whom it(he,she) grants it? In a country where this word has been invoked so often and prostituted some others in simulated processes ...

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...he doubts that it(he,she) us provokes. Particularly, the waves that violently break against the cliff, make us think about the turbulences for which those prominent figures cross in this moment. Of maximum tension, the scene in which the doctor, of knees opposite to the sea, has confessed and the death, as party threatens, seems to hang on his(her,your) head.

Neither Sigourney Weaver's magnificent actions(performances) can pasarse in the paper(role) of Paulina and of Ben Kingsley as the doctor Miranda. So much she(it), with a dramatic but sober action(performance), as him(it), with a coldness that produces shiver, there deliver us a few totally credible prominent figures in his(her,your) complexity.

Finally, Schubert's beautiful quartet that gives name to the movie and that accompanies her permanently, is constituted in important element as backdrop of the events.

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