Habeas Corpus
(Habeas Corpus)

The film’s off-screen context is the first visit of Pope John-Paul II to Argentina during the last civil and military dictatorship. The pontiff is not seen, but we hear him. At a secret detention centre, a guard’s radio broadcasts the various services that God’s highest representative on Earth is carrying out for his faithful; among those present are some of the top military figures. The word of the faith contrasts sharply with the images of the prison of horror. In a cell is a naked man whose fate, we imagine, will be similar to the torture inflicted on the Son of God centuries before. Manifestly influenced by Genet’s A Song of Love, the torturer finds an indirect and perverse excitement with his prisoner. RK