Rongione is excellent all through, however by no means higher than when he is displaying us how Yvan’s “professionalism” quantities to a acutely aware suppression of any kind of ethical learn on what’s taking place. His spouse begins to appear like a extra superior, or enflamed, model of no matter Yvan is. Cléau matches Rongione by out-underplaying him, which couldn’t have been simple to do, so managed is Rongione’s affable, “I am simply a median man attempting to do job” tackle the character. Inés seems stunning in her array of designer clothes and swimsuits, and appears to reside to swim in fancy swimming pools and sip cocktails in luxurious resort lobbies and smoke cigarettes and make chit-chat, immersing herself within the privileges that Yvan’s enterprise has given her, guiding him again towards the established processes each time he reveals a lot as a glimmer of remorse for something unhealthy that he may be enabling.
There is a contact of Graham Greene (“The Quiet American”) to the movie’s portrayal of corruption manifested in a nation’s higher courses. The well-off people who Yvan mingles with all surprise how they will escape the fates of the disappeared, executed, and persecuted. Their motivations mix self-interest, greed, and a reluctance to face for any precept that may carry hurt, and even inconvenience, upon them. Some appear appalled at themselves for being such small, unhappy creatures. Others are extra matter-of-fact, and speak of how essential it’s to simply accept change. A priest who entrusts his investments to Yvan’s financial institution calls what’s taking place to Argentina “a purification section,” as if one thing within the water must be filtered out.
There is a household on this movie, headed by one of many hero’s purchasers, that has been lacking an grownup daughter for a number of years—a political agitator who dared to protest the junta. The film expresses the household’s’ grief and terror by stepping round it. She’s simply not there anymore.
I am undecided what I anticipated from “Azor,” however I did not anticipate what it gave me, and that must be thought-about excessive reward. As in Nineteen Seventies paranoid movies about highly effective folks exercising their will by means of intimidation (I saved considering of “The Dialog,” due to all of the phrases and phrases that stay eerily unexplained) the film is ready in a world that’s disordered and violent however presents itself as regular. In its measured, rigorously classical means, the film will get at a darkish fact about what occurs to the residents of a rustic the place one facet has been disempowering, intimidating, obstructing, and denuding the opposite over a interval of a few years, and the opposite facet cannot be bothered to mount an efficient resistance as a result of they’re primarily involved with defending no matter they’ve nonetheless received, and hoping that no matter unhealthy issues occurred to the ruler’s targets do not occur to them, too.