Four Days in September
Atteva, Richard
our Days in September, the fact-based thriller about some idealistic Brazilian students who kidnapped the American ambassador in 1969, creates suspense the hard way: by making us care about...
...She replies...
...Melodrama demands simplification of morality and it is this simplification that the movie repeatedly avoids...
...A baker...
...Whatever Barreto's answer would be, here is mine: Torture is a crime against humanity, and the torturer himself is indivisible from that sinned-against humanity...
...ecumenical and interreligious studies, or related fields...
...They're my heroes...
...Forced to take guerrilla aliases, they tend to revert to their own names...
...These youths are truly ashamed that their once democratic country is now ruled by a military junta...
...Then she doesn't reply...
...Most of the terrorists are middle-class students, but Barreto and his scriptwriter, Leopoldo Serran, never let us dismiss their actions as the struttings of radical chic...
...She goes in the next room to get something but Fernando continues talking to her...
...Fernando delighted...
...I've often wondered when the old Hitchcockian elements of silence, nonresponse, and unseen awfulness would make their reappearance in a cinema dominated by the noise of machinery and explosions...
...Encouraged to think of each other as mere components of the coming revolution, they can't stop themselves from flirting, gossiping, arguing, and asking their hostage personal, friendly questions...
...But whereas Ford has to jump off motor boats and helicopters to get our pulses pounding, Barreto gets the same effect by planting Fernando in an apartment with his sweetheart after the kidnapping has been resolved...
...Shouldn't the torturer have been portrayed with chilling neutrality as a mere component of the authoritarian state...
...Mark L. Poorman, C.S.C...
...Fernando flustered...
...Applicants should provide a letter of introduction, a current resume and four references...
...We catch our breaths because we genuinely fear for this gentlemanly official with his air of sober decency, wry self-mockery, and need to explain himself lucidly to his abducLors whenever they interrogate him...
...The people united can never be defeated, especially when they've got a hot tip for the cops...
...And who is it that provides the police with the clue that leads them to the kidnappers' hideaway...
...Them and the American astronauts...
...Fernando, an intellectual who can't shoot straight, hears the ransom statement he penned read on TV and starts to mouth the words along with the announcer, so proud is he of his literary style...
...The scene with the torturer's wife isn't there to present some specious relativism (torturers are just folks like anybody else) but to show how the poison from the husband's job pollutes the private life that he has striven to keep separate from his work...
...Applications should be submitted to: Tantur Rector Search Committee c/o Rev...
...Four Days in September is not an exercise in liberal relativism but a work of radical humanity...
...The successful candidate will possess significant experience in educational administration and a distinguished record of academic accomplishment in the area of biblical theoloD...
...Nominations and applications will be accepted until May I, 1998...
...But a terrified girl in the crowd can only put her head on her mother's shoulder and weep, even though the revolutionaries are supposedly robbing on her behalf...
...They've got guts...
...Fernando continues chatting...
...The guerrillas rob a bank and pause to lecture their captive audience of tellers and customers on the righteousness of this "expropriation...
...It also offers three-month sessions in continuing education for parish clergy, religious teachers and other church workers, as well as semesters of international study for undergraduates...
...Ideals and reality collide repeatedly through the movie...
...But can a movie be too humane, too complex in its sympathies...
...Tamur, located just outside Jerusalem on the road to Bethlehem, is a center for theological inquir> Christian ecumenical studies, and interreligious dialogue between Christians and those of other world faiths, especially Jews and Muslims...
...Fernando stiffens...
...Well, here they are in a compact and neatly wrapped package that never stops ticking...
...Oh, those revolutionary euphemisms...
...When the leader of the kidnappers, a hate-corroded ideologue, puts a gun to Ambassador Elbrick's head, director Bruno Barreto doesn't have to amplify the cocking of the pistol so that it sounds like the gate of hell being unlocked...
...But it's not only Elbrick we care about...
...Since torture is indeed monstrous, isn't any characterization of the torturer, any presentation of his psychology or domestic situation, beside the point...
...Let me add that it contains the best action sequences since the Harrison Ford thrillers, Patriot Games and A Clear and Present Danger...
...And doesn't reply...
...And their high spirits and intellectual curiosity don't allow" them to embrace the conformity and self-immolation of the true believer, though they sincerely try to...
...D Tantur Ecumenical Institute for Theological Studies in Israel invites nominations and applications for the position of rector...
...Next to these emotionally messy, humane kids, the cell leader seems small and desiccated, a squat thug, and it's not surprising that the young people are soon responding more to the ambassador's dignity than to their cell leader's dedication, though they are still willing to kill Elbrick if their demands aren't met...
...Like Paul Newman in Nebody's Fool, Arkin is an actor of such technical security that he no longer lunges for his audience but waits for it to focus on him...
...The rector is the academic and administrative leader of the institute, and is responsible for the continuing development of its ccumenical and intcrrdigious mission...
...And then he knows...ll~t've come for him and they've already got her...
...Fernando, taking a cab, hears the driver--another one of the common people the kidnappers are trying to serve---praise the subversives he's been hearing about on the radio...
...And some of the apprehended kidnappers will themselves be liberated from torture by a future kidnapping (not shown on screen) perpetrated by German terrorists...
...The enthusiasms of machismo are seldom politically correct...
...A doctorate is preferred, and a working knowledge of Hebrew and/or Arabic would be strong assets in the position...
...With its car chases, shootings, impersonations, and hairbreadth escapes, Four Days in September is melodramatic yet never a melodrama...
...When the wife learns of her loved one's job, something inside her collapses...
...Four Days in September has drawn criticism by porCommonweal | 8 March 27, 1998 traying a security force torturer not as a monster but as a man capable of love (for his wife), concern for civil peace, and self-doubt (confessing to his wife that torture perpetrates the image of the state-as-monster against which even more idealists will rebel...
...Yet, misguided as these youngsters are, their kidnapping does result in the freeing of many dissidents from the hands of torturers...
...Excellent management, communication, interpersonal and cooperative skills are necessary qualifications...
...we see in her face that she'll never look at her spouse again without imagining the cries of his victims...
...The institute, jointly founded by Pope Paul VI and the University of Notre Dame, is a residential center for visiting scholars interested in the ecumenical and interreligious dimensions of scriptural, theological and pastoral studies...
...With the assistance of the vice-rector and administrator, the rector oversees the educational programs and conferences, the finances, and the staff, and develops cooperative relationships with appropriate acadeMc and religious persons to further the aims of the institute, both in the local and international arenas...
...Alan Arkin, who plays Elbrick, has shucked off all the tricks of his youth--the staccato speech pockmarked by sudden shouts, the demented widening of the eyes--and now seems to be able to think his character into existence...
...134 Haycs-Hcaly Center University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 Commonweal | 9 March 27, 1998...
...Can it be that when a government puts itself above the law, it makes this sort of ongoing exchange of prisoners inevitable...
...Since its creation in 1971, over 3,500 Orthodox, Protestants, Anglicans and Roman Catholics have participated in the programs...
...With innocent bystanders, sooner or later, caught in the crossfire...
...our Days in September, the fact-based thriller about some idealistic Brazilian students who kidnapped the American ambassador in 1969, creates suspense the hard way: by making us care about the characters whose lives are in danger...
Vol. 125 • March 1998 • No. 6
