To the Editor:
Richard Grenier’s review of Missing is, as usual, superb [“The Curious Case of Costa-Gavras,” April]. But writing, not mathematics, is clearly his forte. The incorrect specification of Chilean infant mortality as x percent per thousand yields a tenfold magnification, e.g., 790 instead of 79 per thousand births. Perhaps the Chileans, together with their problems, will, like old soldiers, simply fade away.
Richard D. Wilkins
Syracuse, New York
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To the Editor:
Richard Grenier’s comments about Joy Gould Boyum’s review of the film Missing in the Wall Street Journal are at least revealing, if not much more. Apparently he feels that the political and economic beliefs held by the editors of the Wall Street Journal should determine Miss Boyum’s reactions to particular films. Since Mr. Grenier is the regular movie critic for your magazine, and since COMMENTARY definitely holds a point of view, I suppose we must believe that he practices what he preaches (and preaches and preaches and preaches) and reviews films with editorial policy in mind.
Of course Hitler demanded that art have clarity. Artists and critics who did not share his view of clarity did not do very well. Russia and Red China have demanded socialist realism, and we know what that produced. I suppose we can console ourselves with the thought that Hitler and the Communist art commissars were totalitarian, while Mr. Grenier represents merely an authoritarian stance.
Still, who would have thought that the reviewer for the Wall Street Journal could dare give a favorable notice to, of all things, a Commie film. She is probably a—gasp—feminist, too.
A. Damien Martin
New York City
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To the Editor:
Neither Costa-Gavras nor his films are above criticism, but some of the statements in Richard Grenier’s polemic are literally incredible and demand comment.
The Church Committee did not rule out the possibility of CIA involvement in the coup in Chile entirely—it only stated that it could find no evidence of it. The CIA’s role in destabilizing the Chilean economy prior to the coup is now a matter of public record, as is the U.S. government’s unqualified support for the Chilean junta after the coup. In this context, and after a now documented performance by the CIA in Guatemala in 1954 under nearly identical circumstances, how can we believe that the CIA had no possible role in the coup in Chile?
Mr. Grenier produces no evidence, despite his implications, that The Confession is anything other than a sincere attack on Stalinism. This courageous film remains the only distinguished anti-Stalinist film from any source. It received far less acclaim than Z, and, unlike Z, was a box-office failure.
Are the CIA’s activities, and American policy in Latin America, to be exempt from serious criticism? If not, what serious criticism is acceptable to Mr. Grenier? . . .
Neil Copertini
Santa Barbara, California
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Richard Grenier writes:
I thank Richard D. Wilkins for his compliment and regret the slip.
As for A. Damien Martin and Neil Copertini, a minor inconvenience for authors is that they must sometimes answer letters that are obtuse. My criticism of Joy Gould Boyum’s review of Missing was not that she had departed from the editorial views of the Wall Street Journal but that she was ignorant, as is A. Damien Martin. It is a quality I do not much enjoy in anyone and I do not expect to find it in a contributor to a responsible newspaper. I also do not think A. Damien Martin—who seems to have me confused with General Galtieri—has much common sense. If he thinks a Communist sympathizer would be an impartial judge of recent events in Chile, there is nothing I can do for him.
Mr. Copertini compounds the problem by attributing to me views I do not hold. I did not say that the CIA “had no possible role in the coup in Chile.” I, frankly, have no way of knowing whether the CIA played a role or not (holding, in this, with the Church Committee). I am simply not prepared to take Costa-Gavras’s word that it did, particularly when he asserts this in a movie which begins: “This film is based on a true story. The incidents and facts are documented.” They are not documented. Costa-Gavras plays fast and loose with the facts throughout, and to establish the film’s main theses we have nothing but his “artistic” intuition. Concerning Costa-Gavras’s The Confession, I, again, did not imply that it wasn’t “a sincere attack on Stalinism.” I merely pointed out that it was a sincere attack on Stalinism from the point of view of a Communist reformer, someone who thought Stalinism was a mere aberration and that a better, more beautiful world was still possible under an improved form of Communism. If Mr. Copertini cannot get his mind around this, I don’t think he would benefit much from a lecture from me on the function of criticism in a democratic society.