Ken Loach - Agenda Oculta (Hidden Agenda) 1990

banda sonora - inglês

.

Enviado por HFaust88 em 10/07/2011

Hidden Agenda is a 1990 political thriller film directed by Ken Loach and starring Frances McDormand, Brian Cox and Brad Dourif.

Hidden Agenda

depicts an investigation into the murder of an American civil rights activist in Northern Ireland by the police while driving in the company of a Provisional Irish Republican Army sympathiser. A conspiracy is gradually revealed.

Although fictional, the film was inspired by the investigation into the Royal Ulster Constabulary's alleged "shoot to kill policy". Cox's character represents John Stalker, the leader of that investigation. E4A, an undercover unit of the Royal Ulster Constabulary claimed to be involved in the killings, is mentioned briefly in the film.

*****

Hidden Agenda (br: Agenda secreta / pt: Agenda oculta) é um filme britânico de 1990, do gênero drama, dirigido por Ken Loach, roteiro escrito por Jim Allen e trilha sonora assinada por Stewart Copeland.

• Le film s'inspire de faits réels, transcrits dans le rapport "John Stalker" sur l'Irlande du Nord, et dénonçant l'attitude du gouvernement britannique. Il a d'ailleurs déclenché un véritable scandale médiatique en Angleterre.

• Le film vacille entre fiction et documentaire. Loach a voulu comme souvent dans ses réalisations pousser le réalisme à l’extrême. Au cours d'une scène vers la fin du film, un ex-agent du MI-5 britannique possédant une cassette audio qui incrimine le gouvernement britannique est kidnappé par un escadron d’agents secrets et embarqué dans une camionnette sur le pont O'Connell, dans le centre de Dublin. Loach a filmé la scène avec une caméra cachée et sans prévenir les passants qu'ils ont participé au tournage du film.

Hidden Agenda (1990), directed by Ken Loach, is a political thriller about British terrorism in Northern Ireland that includes the assassination of an American civil rights lawyer.

Hidden Agenda depicts the investigation of the British assassination of Paul Sullivan (Brad Dourif), an American civil rights lawyer and political activist in Northern Ireland, whilst he was accompanied by aProvisional Irish Republican Army sympathiser. Investigator Peter Kerrigan' s (Brian Cox) interrogations, assisted by Ingrid Jessner (Frances McDormand), the dead man's girlfriend and colleague, reveal that the two men were shot without warning, and that there is a mysterious tape recording involved in the killings. The tape was made by Captain Harris (ex-army intelligence, hiding from the British), who recorded senior military leaders and Conservative party politicians discussing how they arranged the rise to power ofMargaret Thatcher. Eventually, Cpt. Harris gives a copy of the tape recording to Jessner, but British security forces kidnap and kill him, and blame his assassination upon the IRA; without Harris to authenticate it, the tape recording can be dismissed as a forgery. At story's end, Kerrigan is blackmailed into silence about the wider conspiracy; Jessner still has the tape recording, and, presumably, will reveal it, but shall not be believed.

The story makes references to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, which imply that British rule of Northern Ireland was sustained with terrorism equivalent to the terrorism Gen. Pinochet inflicted upon his enemies; that the political ascent of Margaret Thatcher was like that of General Pinochet, by means of a U.S.-sponsored coup d’état, not an election; and that police and right-wing politicians, who denounced the IRA as terrorists, were, themselves, engaged in State-sponsored terrorism. The implication that British state authorities are terrorists is reinforced with a a scene (occurred in an Irish republican club) of a singer singing a Wolfe Tones ballad honouring the H-Block hunger striker Joe McDonnell, including the chorus:

And you dare to call me a terrorist while you look down your gun / When I think of all the deeds that you have done / You have plundered many nations, divided many lands / You have terrorised their peoples, you ruled with an iron hand / And you brought this reign of terror to my land.

The story of Hidden Agenda was inspired by the investigation into the Royal Ulster Constabulary's Shoot-to-kill policy. The Peter Kerrigan character represents John Stalker, the leader of that investigation. Secret unit E4A, of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which was believed involved in the assassinations, is briefly mentioned. The Captain Harris character represents Colin Wallace, who was a technical advisor to the film. The Chief Constable Brody character represents RUC Chief Constable Sir John Hermon, and the Right Wing Tory conspirators, Andrew Neame, and member of British Intelligence (MI5 MI6) Alec Nevin, claim Airey Neave was involved in similar intrigues during the 1970s. All three of these characters have the initials A.N although Airey Neave was killed in 1979, the conspiracy in question was in 1974. In conversation with Kerrigan, a conspirator justifies breaking the law to fight terrorism, by citing the use of force to extort confessions from the Birmingham Six (which turned out to be false, and they were released in 1991, a year after the film's release). At one point Teresa Doyle (Republican journalist Michelle Fairley) shows Jessnser a photograph of a masked British soldier posed with an IRA cadaver, after a cross-border operation into the Irish Republic, representing the rumour that Captain Robert Nairac had such a trophy photograph of the body of John Francis Green.

Hidden Agenda was criticised for a simplistic view of the Northern Irish Troubles as an anti-colonial war; whereas the Unionist-Protestant community are seen as a quaint, by American activists who dismiss an Orange Order parade as tribal rites; despite Unionists representing the majority population of Northern Ireland. The story also was criticised for portraying the Troubles as adjunct British politics, rather than as Irish politics (Wikipedia)

-----------