The Spanish title is more sombre, “they arrived by night” the English title certainly arresting.
In fact, Lucia is the housekeeper for the Jesuit community at the University in El Salvador. And, what she saw, or rather glimpsed, with the El Salvador military infiltrating the Jesuit compound – and then their killing six Jesuits and the female staff.
This film is based on an actual story, events in 1989. Celebrated Jesuit liberation theologian, John Sobrino, belonged to the community but was absent at the time of the massacre.
The screenplay is complex, starting with Lucia and her husband arriving in Miami to be interrogated by the American authorities, the FBI. There has been a difficult relationship with the US and the countries of Central America during the 1970s, 1980s, and an American anti-Communist stance. There has also been support for Latin American countries, especially in military training in the School of America. Which means then that the El Salvador authorities are also part of the interrogation.
Gradually, with flashbacks, the narrative builds up the story of Lucia and her husband and their little daughter, victims of guerrilla warfare and military clashes, the father a baker, losing his business, no food, walking the roads, getting lifts, and given refuge by the sympathetic Jesuits at the University, accommodation and continued work for Lucia.
There is a sympathetic portrait of the Jesuits, especially one of the lecturers, guitar playing, friendly, as well as interviews with the Director and his decisions to give hospitality to the family. There are scenes with the other members of the community, meals, prayer, one of the community rather old. Which means audience sympathy when, eventually, the military arrive and the scenes of the killings are shown.
Lucia and her husband are continually interrogated, hurried early in the morning to the offices, the officials not particularly sympathetic and, at one stage, an El Salvador “Dr” present at the interrogations but later revealed, as the audience expects, as in El Salvador Colonel.
The pressure on Lucia and her husband is that they say they saw the guerrillas killing the Jesuits. This is a moral challenge for the couple, simple people, suddenly in a foreign land, interrogations and translations. A rather buccaneering priest from Washington comes to Miami to help them, tracking them down, confronting the interrogators, with threats from Washington.
However, in the conversations, and the realisation that they are expected to lie, the couple decide that they will agree with the lie, that the guerrillas were to blame, in order to escape prison or worse.
At the end, information is given that Lucia and her husband were transferred to Spain and survived the interrogations.
The director is from El Salvador but lives in Spain and the writer is also from El Salvador.
The story should be seen in the context of other films about Central America at this time, Oliver Stone’s Salvador, the story of the priests, nuns and laity killed in the 1970, Choices of the Heart, and, especially, John Duigan’s Romero.
Reviewed by Fr. Peter Malone, MSC
More info about What Lucia Saw (film)
Spain/ El Salvador, 2022, 104 minutes, Colour.
Juana Aosta, Karra Elehalde, Carmelo Gomez, Ben Temple,
Angel Bonanni, Ernesto Collado, Gerald B. Fillmore.
Directed by Imanol Uribe.
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