Five Members on RTÉ 1 Wednesday night of last week was supposed to tell the story of five members of the Pallottine order who were murdered in Argentina in 1976.
It was sincere, and did make for interesting viewing; some of it was moving and even inspiring, but I'm afraid as a documentary it was a bit of a mess. I was surprised that it even got past the quality control in RTÉ. From the puzzling and extended opening scenes of cattle and sheep running around I suspected there was something amiss.
The main problem was that the programme didn't seem to know what it was trying to do. The story of the murdered priests got a look in now and again, when some details were given by Fr Kevin O'Neill of the order. We didn't even get the names or pictures of the victims until late in the programme and so it was hard to get any sense of them as real persons, impossible to appreciate or even know what work they were doing, while we only got the vaguest idea of the circumstances or reasons for their murder at the hands of the security forces of the repressive regime then in place.
The second strand of the film was scrappy coverage of the general political situation in Argentina - stock footage (some of it repeated) intercut with commentary and analysis by writer Colm Tóibín who had covered the politics for The Irish Times. He outlined the state kidnappings, the disappearances, the torture, the dumping of bodies from planes into the ocean. As the young and educated radicals fell foul of the authorities (even some young secondary school students campaigning for lower bus fares were murdered), their parents naively reported the disappearances to the very forces responsible. One couple in jail could hear the tortured screams of their son from another cell. This section of the programme was informative but seemed disconnected from the murder story that flitted in and out.
The third element of the programme was an interview with former priest Pat Rice who was arrested and tortured by the police because they thought he might know something about the radicals in the shantytowns. He came across as a thoughtful, warm and courageous person, but the connection between his experiences and those of the murdered ''five members'' was unclear. Was it at the same time? Did he know them?
Perhaps a narrator might have made some effort at linking these stories, but unfortunately there wasn't one. Sometimes if information needed to be conveyed it was done by text (sometimes mis-spelled) on screen which made the whole thing even more impersonal.
Obviously there are several important stories to be told here. I'm afraid this documentary didn't manage it.It did show the cruelty people can inflict on each other - and this, as it involved torture was very much a person-to-person cruelty. Human cruelty of a more impersonal, but also more destructive kind was painfully outlined in Hiroshima (RTÉ 2 last Friday night) - a far more professional documentary to mark the 65th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb. As life rambles on it's too easy to forget what self-destructive potential there is in the world, so it's useful to be reminded of it every now and then. And what an awful, threatening and frightening symbol that mushroom cloud is.
The programme told the story without being judgemental. Those who dropped the bomb were interviewed - many certainly managed to keep it impersonal. As they saw it they were doing their duty against a vicious enemy. The politicians were trying to stop the war and avoid a punishing invasion of mainland Japan, the scientists were trying to develop a weapon to stop the Nazis. Yet there was no doubt that we were also meant to feel the awful pain of the victims. Some living survivors, now in old age, remembered the day vividly. I'm not a great fan of reconstructions in historical documentaries, but they were certainly effective here. Nevertheless, the survivors' stories were most moving of all - the doctor who was out of town meeting a charred but still living human on the way back, the little schoolboy playing hide and seek, the young tram driver initially worried that she had caused the conflagration, the mother who was riddled with guilt because she didn't stay with her trapped child who was burning to death.
Though it told its story well, and remained fairly objective, the morality was raised only briefly at the end. It's a pity RTÉ didn't follow this with a discussion of the moral issues and where we stand today with regard to nuclear weapons. Still scary.
boregan@hotmail.com
