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The Lion’s Den (1988): Summary and Analysis

Summary:

Vitín Luna is a young police officer who aspires to be a respected member of the armed forces. In order to achieve this promotion, he volunteers to go to Chuspi, a village in the Andes which has been badly affected by the violence of the Shining Path insurgency group. There he first encounters Lieutenant Basulto, who is assassinated by the insurgents and replaced by Roca, a much more authoritative figure. Tensions arise between the soldiers and the villagers who are all suspected of terrorism, resulting in a massacre of many innocent people. Vitín refuses to cooperate in the bloodbath, is accused of cowardice and is detained. He challenges Roca to a game of Russian roulette, and the film ends with his departure into the mountainside.

Analysis:

The politically motivated conflict between the Shining Path and the Peruvian state that started in 1980 and formally ended with the arrest of the insurgent group’s leader in 1992, resulted in close to 70,000 victims – dead or ‘disappeared’ – at a time when the country was also in the throes of socio-political and economic collapse. Peru’s filmmakers generally avoided tackling the potentially fertile but sensitive topic of political violence during most of the 1980s, perhaps mindful of the anti-terrorism legislation restricting public debate that might be perceived as arousing sympathy for the Shining Path cause.1 They may also have been affected by a desire to put a minimum degree of distance between past and present – between real events and their cultural representation – perhaps to give time for reflection as well as to establish the individual and collective mechanisms required to cope with such trauma (Jelin 2003: xvii).

Nevertheless, in 1988, the release of Francisco Lombardi’s La boca del lobo brought the violence that threatened at that time to engulf the entire nation to cinema screens in the form of a fiction feature film that enjoyed critical acclaim and a warm reception from domestic and international audiences. This groundbreaking cinematic work explores the emotions and actions of soldiers sent from Lima to fight the insurgents. It draws critical attention to their encounters with the Andean inhabitants they have come to defend, as well as to the varied responses to the violence they are forced to confront. Indeed, it was the first Peruvian film to deal with one of the most serious issues faced by Peru to this day. Despite sparking controversy, it was an enormous success with audiences, and provided a benchmark for those directors in Peru who thereafter chose to offer their own cinematic responses to the worst political conflict and social crisis to affect the nation in decades.

This analysis unravels the approach of Lombardi’s film to the representation of physical and psychological conflict, addressing the ways in which it explores the complex relationship between violence and national identity in Peru, including the interconnections between masculinity and institutional violence. In common with his earlier films, La boca explores the various effects of fear, claustrophobia and confinement on the collective and individual human psyche, and these perennial themes will be discussed with regard to the way they impact upon and interweave with the film’s more topical concerns. It is likewise important to note that this was the first film made by Lombardi to be located in the Andes. Hence, it is useful to consider how the director deploys the rural landscape to emphasise the gradual subordination of a group of soldiers whose only experience is of an urban way of life and who assume a certain cultural superiority on their arrival in the village they are sent to defend. Throughout, the film highlights and critiques the dominant position of Lima (culturally, politically, socially and economically) in terms of defining and framing the image of the nation, and the subordinate position of the Andean region. It also draws attention to the misunderstandings between the soldiers and the villagers, and considers their failure to comprehend each other as at least part of the motivation for much of the violence portrayed.

In terms of what the filmmaker set out to do, he was forced to articulate this on several occasions in order to defend his work against charges of terrorist sympathies. In an interview published in 1989, Lombardi states that:

“I wanted to make others reflect upon the problem of violence that our country has suffered in recent years. As usual, I’ve drawn on reality in order to explore a theme that unites us all. Violence is with us every day and I think we are getting too accustomed to assimilating it more easily. The essence of the film is linked to this idea that the media, in particular the TV and the press, have led us to believe that this violence is somehow distant. I wanted to make those who live in the cities acutely aware of the violence taking place in the mountain villages that we know little about.” (cited by Bedoya 1997)

Having debated the film before making a decision about its commercial release, the Peruvian military finally insisted only upon a slight modification to the text that is placed over the images of the prologue sequence. Hence, Lombardi was forced to remove his preferred opening title, ‘Massacre at Soccos’, which referred explicitly to the real attack by the military on the Andean village of Soccos in 1983, during which about 40 people – mostly innocent civilians, including women and children – were executed, without trial, on apparent suspicion of collaboration with the ‘enemy’. The rest of the text remains unchanged, informing its audience that the drama is set in 1983, by which time the central Andean region of the nation had already suffered three years of violent repression. The text is fairly lengthy, mindful no doubt of the need to inform its audience of the key details of a complex conflict. It relates the main developments that led to the beginning of the so-called ‘dirty war’ when the military became actively involved in putting an end to the groundswell of insurgency that at first was largely dismissed by the state as the acts of mindless delinquents.

However benign it might appear, by agreeing to remove those three words that refer specifically to the real tragedy suffered by the village of Soccos, Lombardi conferred upon his film a broader metaphorical dimension that is suggestive of the brutality faced by many such communities located in remote rural areas of Peru. Rather than simply reconstruct the specific events leading up to one act of slaughter and its consequences, the film instead confronts the general terrorist phenomenon of the Shining Path. It draws attention to the intense pressure on the military to bring the escalating violence across the central sierra to a swift end, at all costs. In the event, it seems that such pressure led to a merciless campaign of repression. As a result, more inhabitants of the mountain villages were killed by both sides during 1983 and 1984 than at any other stage of the conflict as the military’s strategy was based on an indiscriminate use of terror that for a while was difficult to distinguish from the tactics of the Shining Path.

The release of La boca coincided with a renewed period of repression, disappearances and indiscriminate executions. The community portrayed in the film had clearly already suffered at the hands of the brutal insurgents, as highlighted by images of bodies and graffiti shown in the prologue sequence as well as by the fear on the faces of those villagers who survived. The subsequent narrative depiction of rape and slaughter of villagers by the soldiers sent to defend them thus emphasises the film’s apparent concern to underscore those officially sanctioned acts of violence, whether authorised by one renegade officer or by the authorities in Lima. Indeed, much of the controversy regarding portrayal of the military stems from the different character types representing different attitudes towards conflict and violence within the military itself, and more broadly from society at large.

Lieutenant Roca, for example, is the flawed father figure, a charismatic but fanatical leader. He is ruthless, authoritarian, and morally questionable, and represents the less humane approach to those innocents caught in the crossfire, prepared to deploy any means necessary to defeat subversion, even if that led to high death rates of innocent people. Roca’s status as official state representative is further reinforced by images of him saluting the national flag and leading the national anthem, seen framed by a long shot remote from the crowd and almost engulfed by the church building that itself forms an oppressive centrepiece to the village. However, instead of acting with honour, he uses excessive violence, with the single aim of enforcing a brutal policy of counter-subversion.

Spectator identification with Luna as a more humane character is encouraged by depicting him as the only soldier who attempts to make an emotional connection with members of the local community. Luna stands out, for example, by showing sympathy for his comrade Gallardo’s treatment of the young villager woman. Although he fails to speak out to support her, he later tries to make amends by appealing to Roca not to harm the villagers he has locked up after the raid on the wedding party. It is perhaps also significant that Luna is not involved in the second interrogation scene in the film, in which torture methods of an increasingly brutal nature are encouraged by Lieutenant Roca. A further sign of the tentative beginnings of a mutual bond of kinship comes when the villager who has acted as the regiment’s mountain guide begs Luna personally to save them, as if he recognises that this young man differs from his comrades in his attitude towards the community.

The emphasis on Luna’s experience as crucial to the film’s overall message is further emphasised by the manner in which Roca, already depicted as crazed, hysterical and out of control, chooses to regard Luna’s decision not to shoot as a sign of weakness and impotence – a crisis of masculinity. This emphasises the assumed dominance of a hard, brutal, violent form of masculinity, a machismo, that the film contests. Luna’s ability to commit to the struggle is questioned, and hence also his identity as soldier. He is imprisoned as a traitor, and the physical confinement he endures is aggravated by a growing realisation that his disgust at the escalating brutality marginalises him from the rest of the group.

By challenging Roca to Russian roulette, Luna forces his superior to relive the traumatic event that triggered the psychological breakdown that he has tried to repress by consignment to oblivion. Sneered at by his comrades for his apparent weakness, Luna thereby takes control of the situation and reasserts a different kind of moral and emotional authority. In so doing, he performs his own act of rebellion against the system of patriarchy, represented by Roca, which he had admired but which has failed and oppressed him. The Russian roulette game thus serves as a dramatic device that draws the two men to a similar level by forcing each of them to confront their own mortality at the same time and within the same space. By leading the challenge with determination, Luna proves to himself and to his comrades that he is capable of facing up to his fears. In contrast, close-ups of Roca’s face and hands reveal a trembling vulnerability beneath the surface of the tough image he prefers to project that is fundamental to his sense of self. As the ‘game’ progresses, Luna draws attention to his lack of respect for the lieutenant by addressing Roca using the informal ‘tú’ form, and ensures that the whole regiment observes the spectacle of Roca’s degradation. While the former thus reasserts his macho masculinity before the group, the latter suffers the loss of his in the most humiliating way. In order to triumph, Luna needs to resort to the tactics of violence, but then rewrites the rules by walking away.

The film’s reflective, critical approach provided an opportunity for discussion of issues that affected Peruvians in remote areas on a daily basis. Lombardi was criticised by some for creating an entertaining work in a classical style on issues of such intense and controversial concern that rejected the more overtly political aesthetics and philosophies of his ‘Third Cinema’ predecessors. Nevertheless, he was applauded by most for having placed a polemical fiction about contemporary Peruvian reality at the heart of public debate.

Sarah Barrow

Note

1. The anti-terrorism legislation, introduced in 1981 and enhanced twice in 1987, made it much easier for the government to imprison anyone suspected of promoting a point of view that was deemed to be sympathetic towards the Shining Path cause.

Cast and Crew:

[Country: Peru, Spain. Production Company: Tornasol Films, Inca Productions. Producers: Gerardo Herrero, Benito Lizarralde, Emilio Moscoso. Director: Francisco Lombardi. Screenwriters: Giovanno Pollarollo, Augusto Cabada, Gerardo Herrero. Cinematographer: José Luis López Linares. Editor: Juan San Mateo. Music: Bernardo Bonezzi. Cast: Gustavo Bueno (Lieutenant Iván Roca), Toño Vega (Vitín Luna), José Tejada (Galardo), Gilberto Torres (Sergeant Moncado), Berta Pagaza (Julia), Antero Sánchez (Lieutenant Basulto).]

Further Reading:

Ricardo Bedoya, Entre Fauces y Colmillos: Las Películas de Francisco Lombardi, Festival de Cine de Huesca, 1997.

Alberto Elena and Marina Díaz López, eds, The Cinema of Latin America, London, Wallflower, 2003.

Elizabeth Jelin, State Repression and the Struggle for Memory, London: Latin America Bureau, 2003.

John King, Magical Reels, London and New York, Verso, 2000.

Jeffrey Middents, Writing National Cinema: Film Journals and Film Culture in Peru, Lebanon, NH, University Press of New England, 2009.

Source Credits:

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Films, Edited by Sarah Barrow, Sabine Haenni and John White, first published in 2015.

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