Tony Manero

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, unless of course the imitation is of traits that are not flattering. Movie history is filled with characters of dubious morality that have garnered a cult-like following. John Travolta’s Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction certainly comes to mind. Travolta’s Tony Manero from Saturday Night Fever, not so much. Although the character of Tony is a violent womanizing potential rapist, the narrative of Saturday Night Fever is a beautiful arc of a story that watches Tony grow as human while using dance in the local disco as a vehicle to escape his bleak existence. It is a character that has and should garner a lot of imitation, unless the beauty of the tale is lost on the audience.

The Chilean film Tony Manero follows a man obsessed with Saturday Night Fever during the late 1970s, when the right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet was ruthlessly ruling over his South American country. Existence was bleak so Raul Peralta turned to dance as the best hope for escaping the life he leads. He spends his days studying the film, practicing his dance moves, perfecting his clothes, hair and the stage where he is to perform his opus to disco. It would be a heart-warming tale if Raul didn’t fund his endeavors by also mimicking Tony’s lesser traits. He womanizes to ensure a place to live and violently takes what he can’t afford to purchase.

For Raul, those traits probably were his only chance out. His dance scenes are wonderful moments of comic relief, the dancing is awful with little hope of improvement. He would have been better served taking a hint from one of the scenes of Saturday Night Fever. In the American tale, Tony is mistaken for Al Pacino, who has garnered acclaim for his portrayals of violent gangsters. In a delicious bit of casting, Alfredo Castro, the actor who plays Raul, more closely resembles an aged Pacino than the dancing Travolta he wishes he were. A man like a Pacino character would have been a benefit to the Pinochet regime that violently eliminated all forms of opposition in Chile for several decades.

The abuses of the dictatorship are a backdrop to the story of Tony Manero. The regime’s obsession with its opponents allows the crimes of Raul to go on unnoticed. The only reason politics come close to Raul is because Raul’s friends were in active opposition to their government. Their activities have no affect on Raul because he truly is apolitical. His violence was a means to an end that was to include disco, a genre of music that has been accused of having no meaning itself outside of individual satisfaction. For Raul is satisfaction was all he could see; his downward spiral the perfect counterpoint Tony found in the heights of Saturday Night Fever.