NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT
(directed by Patricio Guzmán, 2010)
****+ (out of 5)
.
> I remember noticing this title at the top of the heap as the best reviewed film in release at that moment.
. It scored a 9.2, if I remember correctly, in “A Critical Consensus”. Anything rated above 8.0 was rare indeed. Those titles represented universal praise and a complete lack of serious criticism. The reviews were ecstatic- and now I see why.
. This Chilean documentary is an odd chimera. It begins as a beautiful, transcendent look at the complex of giant telescopes the Germans left behind in Chile’s Atacama Desert, offering an exceptionally clear-eyed vantage for stargazing. But this barren land shares a story with one of the darkest chapters in Latin American history- the butchering of his own people by strongarm General Augusto Pinochet. During his bloody regime, almost 32,000 citizens were tortured, and as many as 3000 souls were summarily rounded up and killed for political advantage. The “mothers of the disappeared” still comb the parched sand of the Atacama, looking for bits of human remains, mummified by the driest environment on Earth.
. Native son Patricio Guzmán has created an alternatingly ravishing and somber film that meditates on big cosmic questions of who we are and how we got here with the lens of as telescope, but also examines the terrible legacy of Pinochet’s murderous dictatorship through the lens of a forensic microscope. The film exists in the place where archeology and astronomy intersect.
. In both cases, Chileans turn to science looking for answers to questions that are probably unanswerable. Mass graves have yielded remains for some families. Many will wait forever for the closure of understanding. Countless bodies were rumored to be dug out of the unforgiving desert and thrown into the sea, to cover the killer’s tracks. When you first see these watery-eyed revenants combing through the desert floor for pieces of their butchered loved ones, it seems not only the saddest sight imaginable, but also the most futile. Amazingly- they look for shards of bone… they find shards of bone!
. NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT is an horrific testament to the vast scale of the carnage that the Chilean people seem unable or unwilling to fully confront. Denial doesn’t work. It doesn’t change anything.
– Those shards of loved ones’ bones are still there.
*
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