The aftermath of an unfair trial leaves the courthouse even easier than the wrongdoers enter. And there is no exculpatory sentence that erases them. In 1995, in the middle of the Arny case, Jesús Vázquez’s mother died of cancer. His children had banned him from watching TV in the hospital and they filtered the press. His health was declining, but he came to receive the news that any mother in this situation would like to hear: Jesus and his brothers told him that he had been acquitted. He died the next day, unaware that his children had acted in a pantomime, a Good Bye Lenin! so she can rest in peace. This moving scene, previously recounted by Jesús Vázquez, can be heard again with the same emotion in Arny, the story of an infamy, the documentary mini-series directed by Juan Moya and recently released on HBO Max.
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If the Arny case had taken place in Atlanta instead of Seville, Ryan Murphy would have devoted a fictional series to it by now. The coroner in the case, María Auxiliadora Echávarri, would be interpreted by Sarah Paulson. God, Matt Boomer. And this brotherly drama would be the climax of one of the episodes.
Arny, Tale of a Disgrace makes a fair and necessary mnemonic exercise of a case which, by benching them, took its defendants out of the closet and clothed them with the worst prejudices associated with homosexuality at a time when they expected the Habit. It is frustrating that, despite the clarity some of our most significant trials bring to our history, we have not yet adopted the formula of American criminal history. Just as there is nothing more eloquent than a good subtext, sometimes there is nothing more true – and accurate – than the lie of fiction.
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