Charles Horman: A Disappearance Amid Chile's Coup

In September of 1973, a young idealistic American hailing from a wealthy upper-class New York family named Charles Horman and his wife Beth were living in Chile. A free-lance writer, Charles was a curious fellow, meticulously recording conversations and events he deemed significant. On September 11th, a coup d’etat led by the military junta and army leader Augusto Pinchot overthrew the existing socialist government of President Salvador Allende. In the confusion and chaos surrounding the immediate aftermath of the coup, Charles was separated from his wife, never to be seen or heard from again. While Beth was convinced that Charles had been captured by the Chilean government with the complicity of the American State Department, her father-in-law, Ed Horman, a well-connected and successful industrial designer, soon joined her efforts to recover his son, but began the process certain that his naïve romantic left-leaning son had gotten entangled within complicated political matters and was at fault for his own

Yet, Nathaniel Davis, the US ambassador to Chile in 1973, argued that “the only reason Gonzalez suspected the presence of an American was from the look of his shoes. The film turns all this around to make it sound as if this was conclusive evidence.”

On this basis, Costa-Gavras’ narrative was heavily challenged by many critiques for being biased and one sided. In one review, Flora Lewis of the New York Times wrote that “That is the problem. The film gives only one point of view, essentially Ed Horman's, but its claim to present a basic historical truth puts it in a different category from other dramatizations and political thrillers. It is a technique which raises serious ethical, moral and political as well as artistic