The experience of watching the extraordinary Chilean documentary Nostalgia for the Light borders on profound. It’s basically about the common threads shared by the three groups of searchers at the heart of the story, who, in different ways and by different means, are sifting through the past for clues about the present. Director Patricio Guzmán keeps the pacing deliberate and the telling unapologetically poetic as he masterfully ties together a tapestry of interconnected political history, human tragedy, archeology and astronomy and spins it into nothing less than a dissertation on what it means to be human. It shouldn’t work, but it does. It shouldn’t be one of the best films released last year, but it is.
Nostalgia for the Light takes place primarily in the Atacama Desert in Chile. At 10,000 feet above sea level, the Atacama is the driest place on Earth, making it an ideal gateway to the past, whether you’re looking at the parched ancient history contained in the local strata or deep into the night sky at the heart of the galaxies. The clear skies and high elevation allow astronomers to see to the far reaches of the universe. The dry heat and harsh sun preserve the past for anthropologists to study. Guzmán first focuses on the scientists of the Atacama, but slowly transitions to a group of women who have a more personal stake in the desert’s mysteries. These women are the surviving relatives of “disappeared” political prisoners of the 1973 Chilean army military coup. After the coup, thousands of bodies were dumped in mass graves in the Atacama, and the survivors slowly sift through the desert looking for any piece of their loved ones. Some women have spent more than 25 years looking and have found, at most, maybe only a foot or jawbone of a husband’s or brother’s. Yes, it’s heart-wrenching and maybe even a little futile but… are you going to tell them that the foot they found doesn’t belong to their beloved?
You begin to realize that all three of these groups – the astronomers, the archeologists and the survivors of Pinochet’s brutal regime – have come to this nearly-lifeless patch of desert to search for signs of a past that is both preserved and obscured by this terrifying environment. Their methodologies and the scale of their historical time-lines may differ significantly, but their respective goals remain surprisingly aligned.
Guzmán juxtaposes interviews with the survivors and scientists with gorgeous views of Atacama’s surreal high desert vistas and peeks at celestial bodies light years away. He often eschews dialogue altogether and lets his visuals do the talking when at all possible. In one particularly inspired edit, he switches from shots of the moon to closeups of a human skull. They look remarkably alike.
This delicate and deeply personal effort of placing human tragedy up against the enormity of the cosmos makes for a truly unique film. It is stunningly-shot, meditative, thought-provoking and enlightened and if you’re looking for a nice companion feature to match with Terrence Malick’s equally vast Tree of Life, you might have found it here.
Nostalgia for the Light (2010)
Nostalgia for the Light takes place primarily in the Atacama Desert in Chile. At 10,000 feet above sea level, the Atacama is the driest place on Earth, making it an ideal gateway to the past, whether you’re looking at the parched ancient history contained in the local strata or deep into the night sky at the heart of the galaxies. The clear skies and high elevation allow astronomers to see to the far reaches of the universe. The dry heat and harsh sun preserve the past for anthropologists to study. Guzmán first focuses on the scientists of the Atacama, but slowly transitions to a group of women who have a more personal stake in the desert’s mysteries. These women are the surviving relatives of “disappeared” political prisoners of the 1973 Chilean army military coup. After the coup, thousands of bodies were dumped in mass graves in the Atacama, and the survivors slowly sift through the desert looking for any piece of their loved ones. Some women have spent more than 25 years looking and have found, at most, maybe only a foot or jawbone of a husband’s or brother’s. Yes, it’s heart-wrenching and maybe even a little futile but… are you going to tell them that the foot they found doesn’t belong to their beloved?
You begin to realize that all three of these groups – the astronomers, the archeologists and the survivors of Pinochet’s brutal regime – have come to this nearly-lifeless patch of desert to search for signs of a past that is both preserved and obscured by this terrifying environment. Their methodologies and the scale of their historical time-lines may differ significantly, but their respective goals remain surprisingly aligned.
Guzmán juxtaposes interviews with the survivors and scientists with gorgeous views of Atacama’s surreal high desert vistas and peeks at celestial bodies light years away. He often eschews dialogue altogether and lets his visuals do the talking when at all possible. In one particularly inspired edit, he switches from shots of the moon to closeups of a human skull. They look remarkably alike.
This delicate and deeply personal effort of placing human tragedy up against the enormity of the cosmos makes for a truly unique film. It is stunningly-shot, meditative, thought-provoking and enlightened and if you’re looking for a nice companion feature to match with Terrence Malick’s equally vast Tree of Life, you might have found it here.
La Sporgenza
Sunday, February 26th, 2012 at 10:00 am