Midweek Mention...Argentina, 1985

Argentina 1985

Pete: any other cold beer? Are there cold beers?

Dan: they're colding up.

Pete: could

I have a cold bear

Dan: They're getting cold

Reeg: cold beer

Sidey: that was just right.

 Argentina, 1985. Yes.

Dan: A

year before the big one,

Cris: which is luckily the same year I was born.

So

I,

Sidey: Same year that Hans of Love by Kate Bush came out as well.

Cris: Okay. There you go.

Dan: year.

Sidey: Mm-hmm. I didn't know anything about this, like the film or the history, like it's allegedly based on

Cris: Yeah, I, I kind of knew a little bit of the, the TTA and all the, all the, just the general bit of history that I got taught at school because Communist Romania had to teach you everything about every country's history,

It was, yeah. It was. Pretty shit to be honest, because you'll never gonna,

Pete: have been interesting.

Reeg: It was

Cris: interesting, but it's very difficult to remember all that. And when you get asked, Ooh, the year 19, or not even 19, was, ooh, 1586 in whatever, who was the ruler of

Sidey: Bloody blah. All we would, all we would get taught would be about the Falklands.

That's their, like, history about Argentina that we would know about. So this is about the the fall of the dictatorship, the military drinker. Yep. And the then the democratic government and the opportunity to bring the

Cris: former dictator. And then, and the, yeah,

Sidey: Yeah.

Yeah. That's the crux of the

Cris: Well, the general vilan, his acolytes, let's say, because that was the, the army that took over, which was mainly throughout the, the former communists or or fascist states during that time.

Pete: and I'd say even though if so, you are like me. So this wasn't an, a film that I knew about and not a great deal. I I, I've known bits and pieces, I guess,

Reeg: Well, in We did, you did. Secrets in their eyes,

Pete: what I was gonna say. Yeah. So it, it was, it wasn't a great deal of familiarity in terms of the, the topic necessarily. There was the star of the, their, the secrets in their eyes that we reviewed for another midweek mention, I believe. A while back and the

Reeg: e explored that, the, the period sort of just before and just after this movie, which is interesting.

Pete: So the, yeah. The star of this film as well is Ricardo d Darin.

Reeg: Mm-hmm.

Pete: And yeah. So this is him, although this is a 2022 film, so made a lot, a lot longer after the, the secrets in their eyes and he is a bit older.

Sidey: Strong, strong Tash game in this.

Cris: Yes.

Pete: have a strong Tash game.

Yeah. Everyone. So anyway, who's gonna set the scene?

Sidey: Well, it starts with him, doesn't it? It starts with str

Cris: Str,

Sidey: Yeah. You're much better at the pronunciation than me. And he's trying to dodge, he's trying to dodge a meeting or a phone call at the start. He says to

Reeg: well, we get this big exposition dump that tells us that basically this ca Right, so there's an emerging democratic government. Yeah. And there's been a prosecutor in place. He was in place actually during the regime, I think before. And he was kind of, did nothing. That was basically his thing.

He didn't, he did nothing against, he wasn't

Sidey: well, I suspect if he'd tried to, he might have

Pete: this is it.

I think he, he, he did what the, the previous dictatorship wanted him to do. Yeah. Which was nothing.

Reeg: And so now basically the courts have passed this case around to try these guys. Nobody wants it, basically, and it's gonna end up dumped on Stress Air's desk, and he's trying to dodge the,

Cris: we, we get the, the history in writing. As soon as the movie starts, then the, the action goes to the military tribunal, which they should trial. Normally, these these people, there is another OP option that in case it'll go to civil court, he will have to be the prosecutor, and then that's where the movie starts.

And then, After a few minutes into the movie, we find out that the military court decides that they're all not guilty.

Reeg: Mm-hmm.

Pete: But e even before that, what you get at the very opening of the film is the scene of him returning home. Listen to the radio in his car, going into his house and you see his, his family home and, and the, the, you know, the dynamic with his wife is his son and, and the, a daughter that they're initially just referring to.

And you, you find out that the son has been following the daughter.

Sidey: Yeah, he's, he's, he's got her outs spying on her.

Pete: Well, exactly, and, and at first, and this, this talk of a new boyfriend that's on the scene and everything like that, but it, it kind of transpires that he wants to know where all of his family are at any given time because, As you just said, Chris, this is all kind of like the ducks are almost being lined up to the possibility that he is gonna be the person that's gonna take on this like, former dictatorship and there's gonna be a lot of like security risk and, and threats and so on towards his family.

So he, whilst he's kind of like doing it in a, in a low level way, i e getting his son to follow his daughter around. His son's quite switched on,

Sidey: He's really clued up.

Pete: he switched on,

Reeg: And his daughter that he's dishing, ciggy Ziggys to,

Pete: Dishing Ziggys too. Yeah. And she's, she's okay. She's easy on the eye.

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: See I was coming at this from a slightly different angle than you guys, cuz I'm not a fascist, so I was on his side. Whereas you guys Yeah,

Sidey: Different take. Yeah.

Dan: no, it was straight away. You see him? At their desk avoiding this phone

Sidey: It's almost comedic.

He's blaming his, his PA or a secretary, where like, don't put that call through. If he comes in, I'm not here. She's like, no, I'm not fucking doing that. Like, you have to meet this guy. And eventually the guy's blindsided

Reeg: I'm gonna fire you. And she like, I don't

Sidey: you. Yeah, you can't.

Tough. Yeah.

Pete: And then he just comes back with, please look,

Sidey: and,

Dan: and, and you get a well, for me, still at this time, I, I hadn't kind of understood the, the gravity of what, why he was doing or making all the decisions that he was making there.

Why is he avoiding this phone call? Why, you know, who is this guy that's gonna come in? And all these other players all have their own agendas. And so each one that comes in to see him. Wants them to to lean. They want a little information. They want something from him, and he just wants nothing to do with anyone because one, he doesn't really believe that he's going to be allowed to do

Sidey: this Yeah. He doesn't, he doesn't think it's. Possible.

Dan: not gonna be given the resources. He's got one friend that he goes to see an older

Reeg: well, and he's worried about the threats on his life as well. I mean, he's

Dan: Well, he knows this is all gonna gonna come eventually. And as. It goes a little bit deeper in, into the film now. He starts pulling a, a team together, doesn't he?

Sidey: Yes. He's, he's given a guy who's a professor at the local college. Yeah. And he's got no real experience to speak of.

Cris: Well, he's the, the deputy,

Sidey: he's the. deputy

prosecutor, prosecutor. He's never, I don't think he's ever been to court or anything.

Cris: he is the prosecutor and he never heard that. There's a deputy prosecutor.

Reeg: this uh, Moreno?

Cris: yes. Moreno.

Reeg: They get his name wrong like a million

Cris: million times. Yeah.

Dan: And he's just at the trial, sat down at the desk where obviously he's gonna prosecute from, and he is like, well, who are you? Yeah,

Reeg: Yeah. Well, because nobody will, nobody will take on the case. So he has to hire this like a team of like young kids, basically.

Pete: Well, that's it. And that's kind of

Reeg: and administrative staff and that

Dan: and, and they all get together. He says, look, we know people, and it's the young kids who, who haven't been caught up with all the politics that's been going on for years and years, but have been put into these positions, whether it be the assistant or somebody

Reeg: Oh, there's a great scene

Dan: and things like that,

Reeg: They're talking about who they wanna bring in, and he's going, Nope, fascist. Yeah. Oh, he's super fascist. Super. That one is super

Dan: Is he negotiator? Yeah. Yeah. No, he's, yeah.

Reeg: No, really, that guy

Cris: Well, the, the thing is they're either fascist, super fascist or dead.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah.

Cris: All all

Reeg: no, you're right. Because that's what they're in the, the, the crimes they're accused of is the great disappearance or something. Or the disappearance. I didn't watch all of the movie

Dan: but, and well, that, that's exactly right though. It was, this was the crimes

Reeg: that 300,000 dead

Dan: this time, Yeah. Thousands of thousands of people just, yeah,

Cris: of people disappearing, torture and and murder.

Dan: Believing they

Reeg: So not as funny as we were making out

Dan: believing, you know, people to be. Involved with plots against the government or whatever it was. And it was, you know, it must have been terrorizing. I, I knew very little about this time. I obviously knew that there was, there was trouble around, they, they had different governments in charge and things, but this gave me a lot more detail than

Sidey: yeah.

We we're fans of a montage and there's a little brief montage of the kids, the, the young team getting sort of interviewed. Yeah. And a few of them like, well just want a job or, and then there's other one who's like going on and the other guy's getting a bit frustrated and it's, it turns out to be his son.

Pete: Yeah.

Sidey: a slight,

Cris: That was quite good actually.

Pete: I mean, that's a funny scene. And like you say, when they, like, you know, with the dialogue with the fascist super fascists and so on, there's been.

Already kind of like lighter moments in the film. What is a really serious, like an and like intimidating kind of subject matter and, and job to do for the,

Reeg: well, they literally, they literally are shadowy people, following them round and

Sidey: yeah, there's a guy that starts to appear at the first few hearings or just in the corridors and watch's his face. Did they keep getting his name wrong? He, he

Cris: moderno

Sidey: and yeah. And there's. There's like a bit with a, a briefcase left.

A guy, just a, just a spectator. He, he looks around and, and it's just, you know,

Reeg: oh, well they phoned in a bomb threat,

Sidey: because they've been that first and they say, look, we either fucking get bomb scares every day. You know, that's what's gonna happen. So we, so we, so we bottle it

or we just power through and we do it.

And so they do it. But yes, the only option they have is to recruit these, these kids and he just gives 'em a deadline. It's that cliche. Trope of the calendar being marked off day by day. Yeah. And said, right, we've got this amount of days and we've gotta assemble all the fucking evidence we can get.

And I think they get 709. Yeah. Different cases in this. I think it's like a month and a

Pete: Well, they basically go on a tour of Argentina, which look really cool. They're

Sidey: that's one of the montages. Do we get to travel? Yeah.

Pete: yeah, yeah. And there's, there's buses,

Sidey: It's bit in Jones, you know,

Pete: going to like tiny little villages where there's kind of like, like just dusty roads and known around in a few dogs and so on. Looking for specific people that they've, I guess, has been records of disappearances and instances and things that have, Probably never really been properly investigated.

Dan: and, and then they collect these stories and

Sidey: yeah, then we start to hear some of the

Dan: are harrowing,

Sidey: really appalling. There's one in particular, a lady who, a pregnant lady who'd been ab abducted and is forced to give birth like on the floor while the soldiers are laughing at her fucking

Cris: while her hands were tied behind her back.

Sidey: And she's recounting this on the stand. It's fucking absolutely

Dan: And then was made to mop everywhere before

Sidey: the, yeah.

Dan: allowed her to hold the, the child. Oh

Pete: Yeah, like just the humiliation and, and everything. And I mean, what, what we've done here really is F FAST forwarded into the trial, but I guess. The, the, the film's not in two halves necessarily, but the, the, the first half of it is the establishment and then the building of the, the, the, you know, the, the case and everything which they know is already, they've already had it like ratified that it's gonna go ahead, subject to their not being loads of bond threats and, and things.

But then the second half of the film is almost then just the, the actual court case playing

Cris: We also must say that at the beginning of the hearing when the attorney and Moderno Campo have the first hearing, general Vid and all his staff, they all say that they don't recognize this

Sidey: Yeah.

They all recite it Exactly.

Cris: They say exactly the same. They, I,

Reeg: deny the authority of

Sidey: It's just Yeah. It's name and then deny the,

Cris: I

don't recognize the, there's the validity or Yeah.

Or whatever of this. So, so from the off, they still think they have the power. You can still see them. And

Reeg: and are they still waning around because Moreno Campos parents are sort of still in with the military?

Yes. The

Pete: well, his, his mom

Reeg: I'm sure one of them is like waning around one of the generals at their parties. I thought

Cris: He's not the same. He's not, he's not one of the accused. Right. But because

Sidey: his uncle was in the

Cris: Yeah. Was still in the army, one of his uncles, and, and they, their whole family was involved in the army and as we later find out, his great-grandfather was the first admiral in the in, in Argentina. So he kind of started the military academy in Argentina.

So he's very connected to this to the military system. And he respects the military academy and, and the military, but not the people that did what they did. And obviously part of the family, they think you are going after the military, not just people within the military.

Sidey: His, his story throughout the film gives it the kind of emotional center because he's the black sheep of the family. His, his mom's like appalled with him for going against the family grain.

But later on, when they have the, when we move into the, the actual. Case and all the evidence is being recited. She calls him, he takes a call from his mom and he just thinks, oh, he was gonna get another like lecture. And she's like, breaks down and cries on the phone. Say you, you were right specifically

Pete: the story about the, the wo that you just recounted with a woman giving birth in the floor of a car. And,

Sidey: because it, what it, what it is, it's quite procedural in terms of its the setting up of the case, the case and the verdict of the case. So it could be quite black and white if you like, or just. Quite dry, but having him there with his story just gives it an extra like emotional hook that makes it just slightly more interesting.

A lot more interesting, in fact.

Reeg: So how does it play out? Because we are pretty much, as far as I'm concerned, just we got to the bit where they submit the evidence. And that's kind of where I nod out of the

Cris: they submit the evidence and then they bring the witnesses. Yeah. And then with, with more witnesses and pretty much the stories are, I wouldn't say similar.

Obviously there's men and women, so not, but

Reeg: so that's when we get the

Cris: but generally, generally you get all the women were, were humiliated, some of them were raped. Pretty, pretty horrible. And, and obviously they don't show anything, but when you see the, the

statements and, and the, it's, it's pretty bad. And even the man a guy's in love and at the end, towards the end, he just says that the, he was trying to say that We're gonna get out of here and we're gonna get married, and I'll have.

Her girlfriend and she's like, no, I've been raped. Don't touch me. And all these things. So it, it's pretty, pretty

Sidey: yeah. And the, the, the threats do materialize.

They get a, a bullet left with a note saying you're gonna be killed tomorrow, I think within a week. Yeah.

Cris: and the letter has the, the stamp from the admiral's office or whatever it's

called,

Pete: it's from the Navy.

Cris: From the Navy, yeah.

Pete: And, and, but again, a kind of. So, so how, how this the prosecutor, like you say his name again, please. Chris tr Stresser.

Stresser.

So how he deals with these, the, the, I guess the, the, the threat of threats, if you know what I mean? Like the, the, there's not been anything specific other than, you know, a couple of phone calls.

This, it, it's funny how the whole family deals with it because, The, the mother, he takes a call at home at some point and it's like, you know, we're gonna fucking kill you, et cetera, et cetera. And then he puts down the phone and he says to the mum, right, only you and I answer the phone for now. And,

Reeg: it's

Pete: was like, oh, yeah.

Who, who was that? Who was that on the phone? Was it the, the threats guy again? He's been calling all day just like, just, just dismisses it as if it's like, And because he's, because he said earlier on, it's like, oh, you know the people that ring you up and tell you that they're gonna kill you? They're not, like you said, the people are gonna kill you, just come and kill you.

Yeah. And then later on the, the after they've had the bullet in the post, the son says basically the same thing in the car. It's almost like to kind of keep the, he, he does an incredible job of keeping the family kind of, you know, aware of the threat, but not like, you know, shitting themselves like

Sidey: That kid could, could be getting a good job in espionage cuz he then goes, at the end of it, he just like follows the judges and all that. The, the, the, the,

Pete: to find out the verdict

Sidey: like spying on them through the window and he, he's running back and telling the rest of them like, oh, they said this and they're, they're talking about that.

And they're like, yeah. And then what? He's like, oh dunno, he'd like walked off. But they stressed Sarah, he's obviously been worried about his daughter because he, he suspects from the start that. The guy that she's dating could be a mole. Yeah. But it turns out that he's just a married man and she's been sneaking around because she knew he was married and didn't want them to

Cris: That's another one that is actually quite funny because you can clearly see the whole family's fairly, it's quite, they're all quite smart and, and they all have their head on their shoulders because he comes back home at one point and she's there, we need to talk. And he's like, oh yeah, of course I knew he's married.

And don't have my brother follow me. And it's

Sidey: and then she walks off and the mum's just standing there looking at him like,

Cris: Yeah. I told you it's so within all this, I, I thought it's also the, I think that it got the gold medal at Cannes or the Pandora at Cannes. So, so not because I've only seen that at the end, but it has this serious topic and, and obviously a, a really political.

Subject, but also it has funny bits and funny moments and, and quite lighthearted moments

Sidey: what it, what it does build up to. Cause it does reach a crescendo. A crescendo is CSRA's closing statement. And he's, I think he's a bit stressed about how he's gonna deliver what he's gonna say. You know, cuz it's a massive thing to, to bring together. And he is like, yeah, how am I gonna do it?

Justin, I think he actually gets his son to help him with some

Cris: Well, before that he meets the president. Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah,

Cris: He gets taken in one evening he goes to the, the president. Some people come and pick him up. There's a phone call. He answers. Some people pick him up. They take him to an unknown location.

They tell him on the way or just as he gets there, you're gonna be the president. It couldn't be done in the presidential palace because you couldn't be seen. of political reasons and all that. And then when he gets back home after, the meeting with the president, His wife says, you know, what's important now, the president, the president basically told you the closing statement has to be the impact.

He, it has to be the nail

Sidey: pressure. Yeah. Yeah.

Cris: Whi, which, yeah, exactly. Very much. And then he goes on this, it's almost like a, a again, a bit of a moment where he goes to his best friend, the old man who's nearly dying now. He, he sits down in a restaurant with everyone. He speaks to his son. And, and he reads it out and, and stuff.

So he, and even his, I think it was his son or his best friend, says, this is just a lawyers or a scholar's statement. You need something more. You need emotion, you need

Pete: Exactly. Yeah.

He, he goes heavily on the, on the emotional side and he, he refers obviously to all the, like, the testimony that's been given by these people that have been affected. And I think the main sort of theme o you know, other than the horrific thing that happened to the individuals was that there was, that all of these people have got people missing.

Like, you know, presume dead, that they just, you know, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, et

Dan: No closure for

Pete: Exactly. So that that's, and this is the only thing that's, you know, ne the next best thing to the closure of actually finding out where their loved ones are is, is seeing these people get, get

Sidey: so he does, he does deliver his

Dan: with never again

Sidey: He does. Yeah. He delivers his closing statement and it fucking like blows the roof off.

Yeah. And the guy's trying to like order like a good

Pete: There's a standing ovation in the court. Yeah,

Sidey: Yeah, it's it. And it's quite affecting. It does

Cris: swearing at them and it's

Sidey: Yeah. A few of the guys, there's one guy who's been reading the Bible.

Cris: He's the general videla.

Sidey: Yeah, he's, and

Cris: he's the former

Sidey: there's another guy going out and he is like, you motherfuckers all this, like giving it late.

He's like, not gonna go out quietly. And then you get a bit more afterwards, a bit after the, after the case. It doesn't end immediately

Pete: Well, no, they, so they, how you find out what the, the terms that all of them, so the, the, they were effectively as a group sort of like found guilty.

Albeit I think of the 12 of them. I think maybe a couple were acquitted and so he delivers it to his, his friend, the old kind of like thespian guy. I think he was,

Sidey: well, that's what the kid was doing. He was spying on them trying to find out what the sentences were

Pete: out what it is. So he, he goes to visit his, his friend who's now in the hospital and is definitely, he's not gonna make it, you know, another night or two.

And he delivers it. And, and he's disappointed with the outcome because they didn't all get life, which is what the,

Sidey: think a couple took Please or something,

Pete: yeah, a couple of them were effectively acquitted. A couple got sort of, you know, one year, five years, seven years, and then, but the main guys that get their life

Dan: at, at this point in the hospital though, the verdict hadn't come through. No. And he just went and told his friend who is

Sidey: Oh yeah. They're all going down. A

Dan: lot of them, all of

Pete: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,

Dan: Which is the result that obviously he wanted. And he took it quite badly, although lots of people seen it as success because they never even saw this coming, you know, a few years ago that these guys on trial doing time, not gonna

Pete: Well, the, the,

Reeg: Well, they were in charge.

Dan: these were in charge, you know, so

Pete: just shows earlier in the film, it's just on a knife edge where if they listen to that bomb threat, it's never gonna even get to trial. And so that, that's how precarious it, it all was. But yeah, ult, ultimately the vast majority of

Reeg: loved his, they, they were setting up his arcs. This guy who was kind of thrust into this sort of r role of bravery and has to carry it out, like to, to persist against all these odds and keep going. So it sounds

Dan: great. Yeah. I mean, he, he showed ahead of a lot of courage. This, you know,

Sidey: It's, it's quite good the way they do it cuz when he is, when the team's being assembled, you can almost like, he's almost like eye rolling like, fuck sake, you know, I've gotta do this with these like idiots who never done anything, you know?

for me, like a, a legal procedure, they can be quite boring, but yeah. I fucking love this. It

Pete: strange. Well, I mean, we're pretty, we're basically at the, we've, we've done the

Sidey: they get their sentencing and that's like

Pete: that's it, I mean, yeah, exactly what you said. So for all the way through, I was waiting for. The daughter to get killed.

The, you know, is made to get a car bomb to go off

Sidey: Yeah. Well the car bomb does go off at

Pete: Well, a car bomb does go off, but there's no one in it. It's just, again, more warnings and so on. But I was waiting for the bit that derailed the, the, the trial because I, I didn't know the

Sidey: album. No, I don't

Pete: I was honest. I didn't know if it got, and they, they even reference it in the film as the most important, like global trials, well, like tr most important globe in terms of like global status since Nuremberg.

Dan: it was the first trial. Was it that they were charging the military Yeah.

So, this was, this was unique. So all eyes were on it.

Pete: Exactly. But, but the, the, the point being that even though there wasn't, the, the threat was all the way through the film, but there wasn't, I don't, I'm not saying I wanted there to be action in helicopters and stuff like that or anything, but for a film that doesn't have that and doesn't have that twist or that gut punch

Sidey: to keep you on the edge,

Pete: It was still fucking gripping.

Yeah. Brilliantly acted like

Dan: and Riggs at

Reeg: well knowing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sidey: The spaceship bit did tell me Vice

Reeg: knowing it's real, it lends an air of gravity to the proceedings.

But it's also told in a really gripping way. At least the first bit that I saw was just

Sidey: like, oh, you should definitely finish it off even though you now, I mean you kind of, I dunno, may might have known anyway, but really, really, really good.

Reeg: Well, I did wanna know how true it all was. I mean,

Sidey: do, they, they start with some text and they do, it does end with some text as

Cris: Yes.

Yeah. Well, that's where the information is, that this is very significant is the first civil trial that trials, and then the first acknowledged trial that they, they actually trial military instead of a military court, a civil court trials, trials the military and creates a president and, and all that stuff.

So, and it tells the story of stress when he shows him when he dies and he lived until to be whatever

Sidey: it gives you some stills of the team.

Cris: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: as they actually were. And they didn't look that fucking young to me when they, maybe they didn't have that much experience, but it didn't look like young kids like they were in the

Cris: film.

Yes.

Reeg: But also it's the eighties as well, so

Pete: Yeah. Like bad haircuts and stuff like

Sidey: did you look at me when you said that?

Pete: Uh,

Sidey: Um, It's the eighth Argentinian film to be nominated for an Academy Award. And the fourth in a row with Ricardo. Darren after

Dan: any relation to Bobby.

Sidey: Yes. He's his brother. Son of the bride secrets in their eyes and wild tales.

So he's a fucking

Reeg: he's superb,

Cris: he is

Pete: we've done, we've done two Argentinian films now, both with him in, and they've both been really, really strong film.

They've got this like,

Moodiness, but not in a sense that like, you know, puts you into like a funk or anything. It's, it's the, you know, they keep you on the edge of your seat, but the, you know, some of it is just like really dialogue heavy you know, scenes, but they're so well acted

Sidey: Performance is a

Dan: Well, that's what I really liked about this film actually, because it was so dialogue heavy and these courtroom dramas, although this was a little more than just a courtroom drama.

Yeah. The, the dialogue was intelligent. It was

Reeg: sort of darkly comic and

Dan: Yeah, exactly. As, as, as is true in the worst of times, you know, that you have this kind of, You know, gallow's humor about things because that's what keeps people going and you otherwise what we're all gonna cry. So you just kind of move on and they're the odds, terribly stacked against in there the amount of work they would've had to have done.

They had like a shop in trolley of evidence at the end of this sort of six week period. And they've collected all over it so to, to get it over the line. And as he said, he felt. Like he hadn't succeeded, I think, because they didn't all go to jail and they didn't all which is what they deserved, but the politics at the time

Pete: was a nice, it was nice seeing the prosecution team go from really smug and cock, because obviously they're backed by the former fucking,

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah.

Pete: dictatorship in the military. Nice. Seeing them like slowly just get, and by the end of it, one of the clerks, like the girl just like, goes up to the, like up to the judge.

About a phone call and, and just references the prosecutions. They're like, oh, he sounded like you, like a fascist, like just stands, like shows him up in front of the whole courtroom. And that's kind of like you see them completely like reduced to nothing in, in that. Yeah. Yeah, it was a strong recommend for me, Chris.

Great, great

Cris: The,

I have to say though, because, and I, I don't wanna play the communist card here, but I, I do, honestly, I do remember a few very few bits when I was a kid, and I know especially from my dad episodes that how it used to be in Romania, and obviously there's a big difference between Romanians killed our dictator.

We actually killed Joco live on the tele. It was broadcasted live in case anyone forgot that him and his wife got shot. And I, the only thing I actually really, really find different is that these guys, five years before we killed Chaz, cause they trialed their dictators and, and the military and made them go to prison for life and, and kind of settle the country.

Whereas for, for Romania, We killed Chesko, but everyone else kind of stayed in a position of power

Reeg: Mm-hmm.

Pete: Mm-hmm.

Cris: there's a couple of generals that that the

Pete: the head off the snake.

Cris: But yeah, but in, in a, in a regime like that, there's only not one. There's not only one

Sidey: H hydro drive,

Cris: There's not only one man that has, or one couple that has all the power and all the responsibility.

So in a way, I kind of reremember and I remember my dad saying, saying about the disappearances and all that. I remember my dad saying that we lived on the eighth floor, the neighbor on the seventh floor. He had a, my, my dad said that he heard a knock one night at three in the morning. He, the neighbor tried to struggle.

He had two kids and a wife. He could hear a scuffle and a struggle, and then no one ever seen him.

And allegedly he was working breaking rocks in a mine or something. Because that's why they did the communist. They will take you, they'll try you on the dot because you are either a conspirator, you listen to the free radio, which they would, because back home you wouldn't be allowed, like you love, I dunno, the Rolling Stones or The Beatles.

Sidey: Yeah.

Cris: You weren't allowed that. That's capitalism music.

Sidey: Yeah. David No. Yeah,

Dan: no Wow.

Cris: So, those times, you know, that was pretty much how it was.

Sidey: good old days, you mean?

Cris: Well, I won't go that far, but, but

Dan: told you

Cris: kind of, it kind of this, when I've seen that, I was thinking this is a, a nice. Really a nice way to see things and, and how it was done.

And also to bring, not, not because I'm not gonna make it about me and Romania, but it was, first of all, it was really good movie, really well acted based on a true story. It's based on a true story. They're not gonna replicate everything.

Dan: but There's

lots of parallels there isn't there within that

Cris: So,

so I, I, I really, really enjoyed it and, and as soon as I, I've seen it and I think, as I said earlier, I think it got a few awards, a few nominations in that, rightly so.

I think

Sidey: Yeah.

Reeg: you related to it

Cris: Yeah. Yeah,

Reeg: yeah,

Dan: Well, strong recommend.

Sidey: huge. You.