Nos­tal­gia for the Light

Astron­o­my and the trau­ma of mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship might seem unlike­ly bed­fel­lows, but Chilean direc­tor Patri­cio Guzmán has com­bined them as the focus of his lat­est doc­u­men­tary, Nos­tal­gia for the Light. His unique, ambi­tious approach towards heal­ing the his­tor­i­cal amne­sia his nation suf­fered dur­ing the Pinochet régime of the ​’70s has result­ed in a fea­ture that is both poet­ic and pro­found­ly moving.

The film opens with shots of an old tele­scope housed in a San­ti­a­go obser­va­to­ry. These are inter­cut with stun­ning and vivid celes­tial vis­tas. In voiceover, Guzmán recalls a time when his home­land was a haven of peace, a place that har­boured a grow­ing fas­ci­na­tion with astron­o­my and the mys­ter­ies of the cos­mos. ​“The secrets of the sky began to fall on us like translu­cent rain,” he says. This ide­alised, fairy tale vision of the past, with its nos­tal­gic sense of enchant­i­ng won­der, soon gives way to dark­er mem­o­ries and ideas.

Much of the film was shot in Chile’s Ata­ca­ma Desert, the dri­est place on earth. Guzmán makes the most of this eerie set­ting, lin­ger­ing over its oth­er­world­ly fea­tures: the red­dish hue of its Mars-like ter­rain; rock draw­ings that date back before the Euro­pean coloni­sa­tion of Latin Amer­i­ca; and cen­turies-old ceme­ter­ies filled with the mum­mi­fied remains of dead miners.

The place is home, we’re told, to a mon­strous para­dox. Favoured by astronomers and archae­ol­o­gists for its cli­mate and the clear­ness of its skies, the desert is a prime loca­tion for study­ing the his­to­ry of human­i­ty and its place with­in the uni­verse. But it’s also where Pinochet’s rul­ing jun­ta hid Chile’s more recent, bru­tal past, detain­ing vic­tims in Cha­cabu­co, the régime’s largest con­cen­tra­tion camp, and bury­ing vic­tims – dubbed ​‘the dis­ap­peared’ – in the sur­round­ing expanse.

Guzmán inter­views two women in their sev­en­ties who have been sift­ing through the desert sands for decades, des­per­ate­ly seek­ing the bones of their depart­ed rel­a­tives. These tes­ti­monies form the film’s wrench­ing emo­tion­al core. The sheer amount of time they’ve ded­i­cat­ed to their quest is tough to com­pre­hend. They speak with force­ful yearn­ing and beau­ty of expres­sion, with one say­ing she wish­es the tele­scopes didn’t just look into the sky but could also see down into the earth so all the miss­ing could be found.

The words of astronomers and archae­ol­o­gists are equal­ly strik­ing: Gas­par Galaz explains that, while his dis­ci­pline is utter­ly depen­dent on the past, unlike the moth­ers of the dis­ap­peared, astronomers can sleep at night, so their quests ulti­mate­ly can’t be com­pared. But for­mer pris­on­ers reveal that the inno­v­a­tive par­al­lels Guzmán has drawn are not inap­pro­pri­ate or mere­ly arbi­trary, and can pro­vide real solace.

Luís Hen­ríquez, who learnt to observe con­stel­la­tions while detained in Cha­cabu­co, says this gave him a strong sense of inte­ri­or free­dom. Astronomer Valenti­na Rodriguez, whose par­ents were arrest­ed and then prompt­ly dis­ap­peared, believes her occu­pa­tion helped her to cope with their absence. She explains that cal­ci­um is present in bones and stars alike – this mat­ter can’t be destroyed, even upon death, but is reformed as anoth­er part of the universe.