Missing

Costa Gavras’s Academy Award® winning film tells the story of a father and wife trying to find their son/husband in Chile after the Pinochet coup of 1973 (although the word Chile is never uttered during the film).   Sissy Spacek plays the wife Beth and Jack Lemmon, in a surprising dramatic turn, plays the father Ed.  They represent two very different political stances and ways of life. And more than just portraying two very specific characters, they also mirror the larger American political climate of the time, with young people being idealistic and more radical and older people clinging to their ideas of American goodness.  Much of the film consists of Ed coming to terms with the fact that the American government may have played a role in his son’s disappearance and maybe even his death.

The film is most remembered and perhaps even more powerful due to the fact that it is based on a true story.  Missing uses an intimate character driven plot to inform people about America’s role in the coup and in general how the US tends to engage with the world.  Many folks left the film questioning the very things they felt defined The United States and in my mind, the first way to create change is to question the status quo.  Missing was a film that no doubt opened to door for change.

Watch this film to see how it pushed the envelope and then takepart to read up on the coup and then takepart again to see how the film was received and how the government responded.

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