Communists of the suicide club Best of all, the “spiders” took root in the psychiatric hospital. Gerardo Ramirez, a former member of the fascist group "Patria y Libertad" ("Homeland and Freedom") in Chile today knocks a thief to death with a purse and gets into a psychiatric clinic for examination. After a while, patients of the clinic draw the doors and walls of the toilet with spiders - the symbol "Patria y Libertad".
But in the early 70s, life with spiders was more fun, and Gerardo himself with the married couple Justo and Ines were young and full of desire to change the country. The problem is that no matter how much money the CIA paid, no matter how much they paid the Chileans for sabotage, no matter how enthusiastic they showed in street clashes with left-wing youth, the people still followed Allende, when the poor saw the sewers at home for the first time and got the opportunity to relax on the sea. And then Patria y Libertad takes death as an ally.
This film shows the necrophilic side of fascism. A curious scene in which Gerardo is aiming with a rifle at Justo, and he, seeing the actions of an associate, directs the barrel of a gun into his mouth. “The blood of the dead king makes the blood of the people burn,” the leader of the group inspires supporters to play the role of a sacred sacrifice that will help to feed part of the people with dead energy and carry out a coup. Speech produces an effect, and there are several people who want to become suicides at once. Sacred sacrifice, street war, terrorist attacks against high-ranking military - all this contributed to the coming to power of the fascist junta. And three days after the change of power, “Patria y Libertad”, which fought verbally against the two-headed monster of international capitalism and Marxism, ceased to exist, allowing the very international capital to enter the country.
The suicide club has collapsed, but its former members are still alive. The script is a parallel story about Gerardo, Justo and Ines now and in the early 70s. The filmmakers obviously pay attention to the two different paths taken by Gerardo on one side and Justo on the other. Gerardo became a marginal hermit, and Justo and Ines entered the state elite. When do you stop being a fascist? When he left the group, when he stopped communicating with former street associates, when he began to lead a normal life with his family and work? Time has brought Ines and Gerardo into different strata of society, but the main engine of the plot is the attraction of Ines to Gerardo. Which is held back both by public opinion and, most importantly, by the fact that Ines and Justo apparently once firmly decided to close the door to their terrorist past. But with the appearance of Gerardo, this door both beckons to itself, and at the same time brings fear to the soul, bursting out with a desire to take Gerardo away, along with stories about what heroes they used to be together with this Gerardo - directly saviors of the country. In its present state, Gerardo symbolizes Death, which was once called Patria y Libertad. Gerardo exudes death with his sight, his words, and his actions. It becomes for Ines and Justo a reminder that they are also inside the same dead, even if outwardly dressed in the form of a bourgeois. Trembling with fear of his past, Justo and Catholic University professor Ines, who does not believe in life after death. The members of Patria y Libertad, invoking death, let it in like internal rust, which some of them naively tried to cover from above with the clothes of a respectable citizen. When do you stop being a fascist? If you don’t take the side of your victims, never.
In addition to revealing the theme of necrophilia of fascism, “In the Web of Lies” gives an accurate picture of modern Chilean society, in which neo-fascists allegedly sit somewhere underground, but in fact receive help and patronage in various strata of society – from an orderly in a psychiatric hospital to a professor. Even the president himself, in the face of the epidemic, released members of the dictatorship’s secret police from prison. Journalists receive letters with threats and symbols “Patria y Libertad”, and a “spider” appears on the monument to the victims of the dictatorship and the inscription “More will die”. This is a reality, not a movie. The narration of the film is surprisingly impartial - it seems to scan the viewer for his attitude to Gerardo and only at the end of the thunder stuns those who harbored illusions, not understanding what these "spiders" will do when they come to power.
P.S. It is funny how Salvador Allende was called a dictator in the description of the film.
6 out of 10
Original