Crying for Argentina

Those who keep an eye on international affairs may remember that a few years ago, Argentina suffered a massive financial crisis; a mix of overzealous privatization and government corruption resulted in large numbers of the country’s middle and working class losing their life savings. In La Dignité du peuple, Fernando Solanas documents the travails of several Argentineans from the beginning of the crisis in 2001 until last year.

Over the course of the film, we meet these everyday yet extraordinary people: a middle-aged activist who runs a ramshackle daycare out of his living room, a group of women farmers protesting the government’s seizure of their land, two nurses working in a Buenos Aires hospital that makes our battered health-care system look like a paradise, and the grieving girlfriend of a young activist who caught a police bullet during a demonstration. As the title indicates, these people have a surprising resolve to hold their heads up high and keep doing their work regardless of the demeaning poverty and oppression they face every day.

Anyone unfamiliar with the particulars of the Argentinean crisis may find themselves struggling to follow the narrative. The facts and statistics flash by pretty quickly, and the political figures and their decisions are analyzed without much explanatory context. The politicians are also surveyed strictly from a distance; unlike in, say, a Michael Moore film, where the big bad powers- that-be are at least allowed to hang themselves with their own rope, in this film they’re remote, voiceless faces in fleeting news clips.

La Dignité also falls into the trap of false ending syndrome, an ailment afflicting many documentaries. In fact, it’s particularly acute here. With a structure that goes from one story to another in linear fashion, an entirely new narrative that begins after the 90-minute mark can make a viewer wonder when the film is ever going to end.

Ultimately, like most political documentaries, the cinematic aspects are secondary to the themes and, in this case, the characters. The stories of the people profiled here are by turns inspiring, depressing and infuriating, and might make you wonder if our culture would be motivated to such struggle if we found ourselves in similar circumstances.

LA DIGNITÉ DU PEUPLE OPENS THIS FRIDAY, FEB. 9