Nostalgia for the Light | Little White Lies

Nos­tal­gia for the Light

12 Jul 2012 / Released: 13 Jul 2012

Words by Carmen Gray

Directed by Patricio Guzmán

Starring Patricio Guzmán

Group of people walking in desert landscape with rocky outcrops.
Group of people walking in desert landscape with rocky outcrops.
4

Anticipation.

Much festival buzz about this documentary-with-a-difference, but will its heavy subject matter make it a slog?

4

Enjoyment.

This stunningly original, poetic yet unpretentious film shows just how creative and engaging documentaries can be.

4

In Retrospect.

Sticking in the mind, Nostalgia for the Light leaves much food for thought on life’s important questions.

A stun­ning­ly orig­i­nal, poet­ic yet unpre­ten­tious film about astron­o­my and the trau­ma of mil­i­tary dictatorship.

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.

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