The Golden Globe awards ceremony on Tuesday night brought a major surprise when the best non-English language feature award went to Argentina, 1985. This historic legal drama, directed by Santiago Mitre, tells the story of the prosecutors who put the Argentine military on trial for state terrorism committed during the country's dictatorship. The film beat out heavy favorites, such as Netflix's German war drama All Quiet on the Western Front, Indian box office hit RRR and Cannes festival winners Close and Decision to Leave.
This Golden Globe win for Argentina, 1985 now puts increased focus on the film for awards season, with many seeing it as a strong contender for an Oscar nomination in the best international feature category. However, its rivals for the award, such as Ireland's The Quiet Girl, Jerzy Skolimowski's Polish drama EO and Ali Abbasi's newly-relevant Iranian feature Holy Spider, are also worthy contenders. Despite this, the Golden Globe win has put Argentina, 1985 in the spotlight as Argentina's best chance of Oscar glory in a decade.
Argentina, 1985 has much in common with the 2010 best international feature winner Secret in Their Eyes, which is to date the only Argentine film to win the Oscar. Both are legal dramas that examine the legacy of Argentina's military dictatorship of the 1970s and early 1980s, and both feature Argentine star Ricardo Darín as a principled prosecutor willing to challenge authority in the pursuit of justice. However, while Secret in Their Eyes is an adapted work of fiction, Argentina, 1985 is a film that hews closely to historical facts.
In Secret in Their Eyes, public prosecutors spend 25 years tracking down a murder and rapist who is protected by the secret police, who use him to carry out their "dirty war" against political dissidents during the dictatorship. Darín plays the lawyer Benjamin Esposito in a dual role, as the idealistic young prosecutor at the start of his career and as the cynical, world-weary man looking back on his life and trying to figure out what went wrong. The story is told in the form of a procedural thriller and the film's political commentary is subtle, with the setting serving as the backdrop for the movie's primary themes of justice and the power of memory.
In contrast, Argentina, 1985 is an Amazon Prime original film which follows the true story of Julio Strassera and Luis Moreno Ocampo, the public prosecutors who put the Argentine military on trial for their actions during the dictatorship. Mitre meticulously recreates the period of the trial, even using the same 1980s pneumatic cameras and lenses to mimic the look and feel of the original trial which was broadcast live on national TV. The film is much more clearly making a political statement about the importance of the rule of law in establishing and maintaining democracy.
This message, made all the more timely by recent events such as the storming of the Capitol in the US and the national capital in Brazil, could give Argentina, 1985 an edge with Oscar voters. It is clear that the Golden Globe win has brought increased attention and recognition to Argentina, 1985 and it will be interesting to see how the film performs in the upcoming awards season.
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