Nostalgie de la lumière

"Nostalgia for the light" takes us on a journey through Chile's Atacama's desert. Throughout this documentary, Patricio Guzman becomes a key interlocutor weaving images, interviews and poetics. This story of a nation's history, pain, joy, discovery and the unknown pulls us into a well of thought.

A group of women search for their beloved ones killed during Pinochia's Military dictatorship. Astronomers discover the early beginnings of life. Archaeologists narrate the history of lost civilizations. They revisit the desert each time in search for answers to the same questions.

We shift through two realms through the ethereal sounds and sights that form throughout the film. The past, present and future constitute our lives. Amnesia is a nation's curse up until front- liners revive history.

Past. Present. Future. Time is nothing more than a grain of sand basking in the expansivity of the Atacama desert. A multitude of particulates comprising the essence of universal history. Humanity, throughout centuries of beguiling empires and colossal civilisations, expends precious present time to research forgotten pasts in order to shape the future. To better society for the next generation. To evolve as an intellectual species. To live and learn. Astronomers magnify their tender visions towards the stars, attempting to acquire omniscient knowledge for the origins of life. Stars that, whilst illuminate the night sky with faint glimmers of freedom, have since perished. The light of a past life, gliding across space and time. Observatories prevailing the mountainous peaks of the Chilean deserts, never glancing down on the arid ground. Archeologists scavenge the vastness of perilous lands to uncover the remnants of primordial civilisations. Buried beneath the bustling metropolises that preside over the earthly layers of desolation. Scanning the facets of crimson rocks beneath the blistering sun of the Atacama desert for pre-Colombian scriptures, always searching beneath the scorched ground. Both professions delicately observing the past to answer questions that have remained undetermined.

Yet both ignore the significance of an "insignificant" massacre that is conveniently concealed by Chilean society. The Pinochet regime. A military dictatorship that detained and slaughtered thousands of Chileans, obscuring the remaining evidence by moulding mass graves in the midst of the wilderness. A particulate in history that the modern Chilean populous have audaciously decided to ignore. However, a selection of zealous women scout the Atacama landscape foraging for fragments of shattered bones, in the glimmering hope that the remnants of their beloved will be uncovered. The human tenacity tested. A near impossible task for peace and solace. Scouring the desertification of the past, to seek comfort for the future. Much like astronomers and archeologists, these women are on the same emphatic journey for answers. All delving into the past to establish a greater understanding.

Guzmán's cinematic diary, whilst tackling the sociopolitical ignorance of the Pinochet dictatorship, existentially challenges the national application of insufficient accountability through the metaphoric connectivity between the regime's outlook and astronomy. Two initially diverse subjects somehow manufacturing a multitude of succinct links that convey the ferocious human spirit. Transitioning between various professions, utilising articulate interviews and profound commentary, to devise various associations that elude to a thematic symbiotic relationship. The female individuals foraging the desert for splinters of calcium, in the form of bone fragments, whilst astronomers scan calcium levels within the remnants of stars. Guzmán visually comparing the two through the usage of still slides. Commencing with close-ups of asteroids and moons before metamorphosing the images to bone fragments, assimilating an indistinguishable identical form. Cinematic examples such as the aforementioned further enhance the interchangeable thematic quest, searching for fractured past life in the present.

Various connections may initially seem tenuous, especially when focusing on the survivors from the Chacabuco concentration camp, but that's where Guzmán's enlightening commentary comes into fruition. Describing Lawner's time at Chacabuco, whom was referred to as an "architect" for his acute ability in memorising the prison's infrastructure by systematically counting how many steps dictated each wall, may originally seem insubstantial. Until Guzmán concludes his interview with a scholarly comment regarding Lawner's wife. The couple are a metaphor for Chile. He remembers the past, she, whom is suffering with Alzheimer's disease, is forgetting.

Circling back to the primary purpose of Nostalgia For The Light. We should never forget, but instead remember. To educate ourselves into uncovering our own origins. Bolstered by provocative imagery, with much applause aimed towards Dijon's exquisite cinematography (except the commonly used stardust filter that cheapened the cinematic quality of the documentary), and poetic narrative flow, Guzmán relentlessly tackles the parallels time offers to humanity. Physically transporting us on a self-discovering journey across the cosmos and the sprawling ground beneath our ignorant feet. We expend substantial amounts of time surveying remnants of remnants in a bid to discover answers, yet those who do not are unable to understand their past. There is no beginning or future to them. Only existence as a shell. "Compared to the immensity of the cosmos, the problems of the Chilean people might seem insignificant. But if we laid them out on a table, they would be as vast as a galaxy".

This beautiful film will capture you emotionally, visually and intellectually. Patricio Guzmán's examination of light—its relationship to the past and what it illuminates of the future—is stunningly beautiful, insightful and very well shot. A scientist states early on in the film that there is no present only the past and future as the words he is forming with his mouth have already happened by the microsecond it takes for his voice to travel from his mouth to his subject's ears. It is this sort of abstract thought that permeates the films dialogue creating the mood.

A movie that goes through a delicate drama going on in the Atacama desert.

Until I watched it, I honestly didn't know that the best place in the whole world to search for light from the universe, also possesses the remaining of a mass tragedy that Chile went through. The movie brought these two things coherently, and it has this incredible comparison between a two distinct opposites, the beauty of the universe, and the ugliness of ourselves.

Somewhere in the movie one has to ask himself many questions. In a universe this vast with endless dots spreading all over its unbelievably ample space, with each dot as a whole star, smaller, similar or larger than the Sun; why do teeny tiny humans on Earth act so blindly to each others?! What is the purpose of knowing what's up there a million light years away while we still can't understand or deal with what's just beneath our noses? How come we were able to develop such powerful telescopes to look deep into outer space but not being able to develop a clearer insight to our own kind? And, how absurd it is to seek political power at any cost.

This beautiful movie provokes such questions and more, using the hardest way imaginable. Beautiful, but sad documentary.

This film is not a documentary in the traditional sense. It is more a work of poetry, or a spiritual experience.

The brutal results of Pinochet's military dictatorship are meshed with the search for the origins of the universe. Both subjects deal with the past, as we only have past and future; there is no present as Augustine said many years ago.

So, astronomers are really archaeologists. They study space to discover the past. Writer/director Patricio Guzmán combines this "archaeology" with the archaeologists who search the desert for the bodies buried by Pinochet.

A fascinating story.