1976 Movie Review. 1976, directed by Manuela Martelli, tells the story three years after the military coup in the South American country Chile. She wanted to remind those who knew that period and those who did not, a part of the dark period in which the Pinochet junta, which overthrew the socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973, was in full swing. She did it well.
Martelli, who was born in 1983, wanted to look at the period through the eyes of a bourgeois housewife who lived her wealthy life in her first feature, which had its world premiere in Cannes last year.
The film begins in the workshop where Carmen, the wife of a Santiago doctor, chooses colors for the wall of their summer house, which is under renovation. A middle-aged woman is trying to capture the rosy glow of a Venetian sunset from the brochure in her hand among the paint barrels. When she is suddenly startled by shouts coming from the street, pink paint drips onto her elegant sax blue shoes. Yes, there is blood outside! We hear that a woman was taken away by soldiers in broad daylight after the fight. We realize that the shoe stuck under the wheel of the car on the empty street belongs to the detained person.
Carmen, who lives unaware of what is going on in the country where radio and television broadcasts are interrupted by junta praises, is the turning point of her life when she accepts to care for an injured young man who was shot in the leg, upon the request of the helpful priest of the small town where her summer house is located. Her desire to become a doctor in her youth was prevented by the patriarchal family system, and she tried to fulfill this desire by working as a Red Cross nurse during the Second World War, and she did not hesitate to offer her support to the visually impaired under the supervision of the priest. However, at this inevitable turning point in her life, agreeing to take care of the resistance fighter Elias secretly from everyone will first cause the blindfold to loosen from her own eyes.
‘1976’ is a subtle production that builds its tension through a woman living in a glass mansion who moves slowly and realizes what is happening in horror. Carmen, who loses her sleep with the awareness of the cruelty, torture, and unsolved murders thrown into the ocean around her, the middle-aged bourgeois woman who makes distant references to Hitchcock’s famous ‘North by Northwest’, shown in our country under the name ‘Secret Agency’, Elias and his organization friends in eerie abandoned settlements. Will their efforts to establish contact between them yield any results? In a bloody system where no one is safe, will there be any point in shedding tears without taking individual responsibility?
Young Martelli, who starred as an actor in the 2004 production ‘Machuca’, wrote the script based on his grandmother’s suicide in 1976. Carmen represents women who have been assigned the role of mother and housewife by the patriarchal order and whose passions have been lost in tears. I recommend you to see this unpretentious but powerful film, in which Aline Küppenheim gives a brilliant performance in the leading role.
1976 (2023)
Directed by: Manuela Martelli
Starring: Aline Kuppenheim, Nicolás Sepúlveda, Hugo Medina, Alejandro Goic, Carmen Gloria Martínez, Antonia Zegers, Marcial Tagle, Amalia Kassai, Ana Clara Delfino, Elena Delfino
Screenplay by: Manuela Martelli, Alejandra Moffat
Production Design by: Estefania Larrain
Cinematography by: Yarará Rodríguez
Film Editing by: Camila Mercadal
Costume Design by: Pilar Calderon, Gabriela Varela Laciar
Set Decoration by: Francisca Correa
Music by: Mariá Portugal
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Kino Lorber
Release Date: May 26, 2022 (Cannes), October 20, 2022 (Chile), May 5, 2023 (United States)
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