Los ojos vendados

Theater manager José Luis Gómez watches a commission report on torture and a victim of that torture speak of her experience. He decides to stage a show based on it. When Geraldine Chaplin gets the role of the victim, her life begins to resemble that of a victim of violence. She moves out of her marriage home to stay with Gómez as his lover. As time goes on and she delves into how to play the character, she begins to dream of the events happening to her.

Carlos Saura's movie can be read as an indictment of Method Acting, of the insanity that comes with delving too deeply into a role so that reality loses its meaning. Equally, it can be viewed as the loss of reality on the part of terrorist and dictatorial governments. I learned recently that among college-educated terrorists, the most frequent major seems to be engineering. The article speculated it was not because they know how to make bombs, but because their training leads the to the idea that there is always one right answer, and therefore other choices are wrong.

That unsettling thought aside Saura's movie lacks a philosophic underpinning, except that he's against violence because it hurts people, or worse, upsets otherwise nice people. Perhaps it's the sense of focus among the actors, who behave as if what they are doing will have no real-life repercussions that''s the point: do what's right, but understand it may not turn out well.