In 1995 a Chilean man's body was found dead on a beach near Montevideo. His name was Berrios, and he had been a chemist working for the Pinochet regime in the development of lethal poisons. In 1993 he had fled Chile for Uruguay, where he had been, so the film indicates, under the 'protection' of the Uruguayan military police as the complex US run Operation Condor unravelled. This is the context of Shroeder's movie, which follows the investigations of Julia Gudari, an attorney, as she attempts to understand what happened when Berrios appeared briefly at a police station in 1993 before disappearing completely from view.
It's difficult to know exactly what to make of the movie, which never quite lives up to the fascinating premise. The film follows Julia as she moves from Montevideo to Buenos Aires to Santiago in pursuit of the truth, in the face of familial and professional opposition. However, it has to contend with the fact that in the end, Julia achieves little in spite of her gruelling efforts.
The fact that the film has three scriptwriters perhaps indicates a movie that isn't exactly sure of its focus. The director intercuts several aesthetically pleasing shots of Julia as she swims in a pool to relieve the tension she's enduring, but this nod towards a detailed psychological portrait of a woman confronting the still beating corpse of Latin American dictatorships is not carried much further. It almost feels as though, just by dealing with this contentious topic, the director feels he's doing his job, and assumes the significance of the story will lend a weight to the film which it never achieves.
The slight lack of focus is a pity, as the material is rich and the story feels like one that needs to be told. From my perspective it felt as though there was more drama inherent within Julia's story than the story revealed. However, within the context of a Latin America still getting to the grips with events of the not-so-recent past, it may be that the film is more telling. I watched it in Punta Carretas shopping, an affluent corner of Montevideo. The audience seemed engrossed and attentive. All save for one man who sat behind me, and shuffled restlessly the whole way through, as though he was itching to escape but didn't feel he could. In its quiet portrait of the ties between state and family, and the way in which the values of la patria possess the capacity to mess with the delicate equilibrium of the family unit, Matar A Todos puts a finger on an issue which remains a faultline within Uruguayan society.
It's difficult to know exactly what to make of the movie, which never quite lives up to the fascinating premise. The film follows Julia as she moves from Montevideo to Buenos Aires to Santiago in pursuit of the truth, in the face of familial and professional opposition. However, it has to contend with the fact that in the end, Julia achieves little in spite of her gruelling efforts.
The fact that the film has three scriptwriters perhaps indicates a movie that isn't exactly sure of its focus. The director intercuts several aesthetically pleasing shots of Julia as she swims in a pool to relieve the tension she's enduring, but this nod towards a detailed psychological portrait of a woman confronting the still beating corpse of Latin American dictatorships is not carried much further. It almost feels as though, just by dealing with this contentious topic, the director feels he's doing his job, and assumes the significance of the story will lend a weight to the film which it never achieves.
The slight lack of focus is a pity, as the material is rich and the story feels like one that needs to be told. From my perspective it felt as though there was more drama inherent within Julia's story than the story revealed. However, within the context of a Latin America still getting to the grips with events of the not-so-recent past, it may be that the film is more telling. I watched it in Punta Carretas shopping, an affluent corner of Montevideo. The audience seemed engrossed and attentive. All save for one man who sat behind me, and shuffled restlessly the whole way through, as though he was itching to escape but didn't feel he could. In its quiet portrait of the ties between state and family, and the way in which the values of la patria possess the capacity to mess with the delicate equilibrium of the family unit, Matar A Todos puts a finger on an issue which remains a faultline within Uruguayan society.
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