My Imag­i­nary Country

The cin­e­ma of Patri­cio Guzmán has one his­tor­i­cal moment which remains at the fore­front of its over­ar­ch­ing polit­i­cal agen­da: the 1973 mil­i­tary coup d’état and the long shad­ow that was cast over Chile’s mod­ern his­to­ry by Gen­er­al Augus­to Pinochet. My Imag­i­nary Coun­try – a title that fit­ting­ly attests to the frag­ile fic­tion of the neolib­er­al nation-state – arrives at a dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal moment for Chile, and com­pared to Guzmán’s wider opus, assumes an entire­ly dis­tinct mood and style in offer­ing a snap­shot of a new social rev­o­lu­tion against a vast his­to­ry of repression.

Demon­stra­tions in Chile first began in Octo­ber 2019 when a hike in trans­port fares took the price of a tick­et to 30 pesos. Mass fare eva­sions and stu­dent-led demon­stra­tions fol­lowed, and soon enough, the slo­gan of the estal­li­do social (social out­burst) became, ​“It’s not about 30 pesos; it’s about 30 years”. These demon­stra­tions would cul­mi­nate in the biggest ever march in Chile, where over a mil­lion peo­ple took to the streets and ground the cap­i­tal to a halt. Guzmán’s film cel­e­brates the momen­tum of this spon­ta­neous grass­roots move­ment which led to a his­toric vote, in which 78 per­cent of Chileans vot­ed to scrap the ille­git­i­mate dic­ta­to­r­i­al con­sti­tu­tion in favour of draft­ing an entire­ly new, egal­i­tar­i­an con­sti­tu­tion (that, since the film’s com­ple­tion, has sad­ly been rejected).

When Guzmán arrives in San­ti­a­go a year after the first sparks of revolt, he turns his cam­era to the pri­ma­ry sub­jects of his pre­vi­ous film, The Cordillera of Dreams: the rocks of the Andean moun­tain range. As mil­i­tary vehi­cles spray tear gas and launch rub­ber bul­lets, these rocks, pulled from the capital’s cob­ble­stone streets by pro­test­ers, become the most promi­nent instru­ment and sig­ni­fi­er of dis­sent as they are hurled against riot police and banged against the three-metre-tall met­al fence sur­round­ing the land­mark stat­ue of Manuel Baque­dano – a mon­u­ment that imprints its colo­nial and patri­ar­chal pres­ence over cen­tral San­ti­a­go, in a square which pro­test­ers have renamed Plaza de la Dig­nidad (Dig­ni­ty Square).

The unrest was sparked from eco­nom­ic frus­tra­tions, but as these are insep­a­ra­ble from the struc­tur­al pat­terns of patri­ar­chal abuse and exploita­tion, Guzmán focus­es on those whose polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion to this large­ly lead­er­less rev­o­lu­tion was key. The tes­ti­monies of pre­dom­i­nant­ly younger women – pho­tog­ra­phers, first-aid work­ers, polit­i­cal sci­en­tists, sin­gle moth­ers, fem­i­nist activists – are placed front and cen­tre, form­ing the film’s stir­ring emo­tion­al core. Guzmán’s nar­ra­tion retains its usu­al airy, incan­ta­to­ry allure, but here the film­mak­er shifts into hope­ful resignation.

We remain fair­ly close to the sur­face, and the reportage plus talk­ing-heads for­mu­la not only goes against the filmmaker’s pen­chant for poet­ic inter­play and philo­soph­i­cal inquiry, but also pre­vents the film from exam­in­ing the impact of the changes it observes. Nonethe­less, all the ingre­di­ents here are invalu­able, and the film’s vision comes alive with a real sense of hope about the soul of Chile and its thirst for change that’s pal­pa­ble, not imaginary.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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