Nature, Loss, and Remembrance
Patricio Guzmán’s poetic Chile Trilogy
“We are each responsible for everything,” the poet Raúl Zurita tells director Patricio Guzmán in The Pearl Button. Zurita is reflecting on the vast geographic beauty of Chile in comparison to its violent history. Most of Guzmán’s work has been documenting the history of Chile. He first established himself as a major documentary filmmaker with The Battle of Chile, a three part documentary released from 1975 to 1979. It includes incredible observational footage of the populist movement supporting socialist leader Salvador Allende and the coup that overthrew his democratically elected government on September 11, 1973. Guzmán fled Chile with his footage and has since lived throughout Europe. For 16 years the country was ruled under the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Thousands of political opponents to the dictatorship were tortured and murdered. Some of Guzmán’s subsequent documentaries, like Chile, Obstinate Memory (1997), The Pinochet Case (2001), and Salvador Allende (2004), are direct and political using traditional interviews, observational footage, and some narration.
Guzmán took a radically different stylistic approach with the Chile Trilogy—Nostalgia for the Light (2011), The Pearl Button (2015), and The Cordillera of Dreams (2019). The Chile Trilogy is a more poetic and spiritual reckoning with the Pinochet regime, and can be considered essay films because they are largely driven by narration and include more of Guzmán’s personal reflections. They are arguably his most moving and beautifully crafted documentaries. Each documentary is anchored to a unique natural phenomenon connected to the country. The viewer is shown stunning footage of the natural wonders of Chile and its unique conditions for viewing the cosmos. But after acquainting them with Chile’s beautiful geography, Guzmán seamlessly transitions to the human stories of great loss. The mountains, oceans, deserts, and night skies are characters that play an important role in the lives of the people they surround. The power and beauty of nature is used to emphasize the value of each human life cut short by injustice.
The study of celestial bodies and the stars in Nostalgia for The Light connects directly to the search for the human soul. The Atacama Desert is the driest place on earth, making it a prime place to observe space and collect scientific data. Those same characteristics have helped preserve the bodies of the dead. The documentary switches between astronomers’ search for answers in the cosmos and the search of family members for the remains of their loved ones in the desert. There is a scene in which a scientist is excitedly talking about how calcium came from the Big Bang, that it is a part of stars, and also a part of the human body. After this moment the moon’s surface is shown and then fades into a human skull. If humans are composed of the same matter of stars, which are shown throughout in vibrant and magnificent detail, then should not the lives of individuals be valued the same way?
By connecting the individual soul to the workings of the cosmos, Guzmán is able to highlight the beauty and value of each soul disappeared during the Pinochet regime. Those who suffered and had loved ones disappear during the Pinochet dictatorship have a deep connection to the cosmos. Luis Henriquez, who was imprisoned in the Chacabuco concentration camp in the Atacama Desert, describes how he kept his humanity by watching the stars with his friends. This spiritual connection is best embodied in a scene where an astronomer, Valentina Rodriguez, speaks about her disappeared parents. As she holds her infant in her arms, we hear a voiceover of her speaking of how she sees her life connected to the broader universe through stars, energy, and a cycle of life, and that this helps her live with the loss of her parents. This is one of the most powerful moments of the film because we see how treasured this infant is, and better understand the magnitude of loss experienced by Valentina and the women searching the desert for their loved ones.
The stars help give meaning in Nostalgia for the Light, but water is a witness and place of solace in The Pearl Button. In The Pearl Button water is the main witness to the destruction of indigenous peoples and the disappeared during the Pinochet dictatorship. The indigenous tribes of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego lived on the islands and coastal areas on the southernmost tip of South America, which are now controlled by Chile and Argentina. The ocean was a meaningful part of their daily lives and survival. Descendants of the Kawésqar and Yagán tribes tell stories of canoeing vast distances and constantly swimming in the water to fish. Through a soundscape of dripping, pouring, and cracking, and ethereal depictions of glaciers, waves, and brooks, Guzmán helps convey this intimate relationship to the audience. This connection is further emphasized when Claudio sings and his voice is matched with different scenes of waves, streams, and descending bubbles. Water is not an indifferent element, but is depicted as a kind and living entity. Guzmán never mentions God or a higher being watching down, but through majestic depictions and stories of deep connection, it is clear that water is a being with a voice and power. When the islands are colonized, the people massacred, and the perpetrators never punished, water is the only witness that remembers everything.
The water that witnessed the suffering of the indigenous peoples also is a witness to the crimes of the Pinochet regime. The same ocean becomes a graveyard where victims of the Pinochet regime are dumped in the thousands. Guzmán shows a somber ritual of divers searching for rails that were used to weigh down bodies and carefully bringing the rails to the surface. Throughout this underwater scene are similar shimmers of light and a focus on the water bubbles, as in a previous scene where Claudio was singing with the water. The victims of Pinochet may not have had the type of relationship with the ocean as the indigenous people, but the spiritual connection to the water is clear.
In The Cordillera of Dreams, the cordillera plays a similar role in preserving memories of the past. The cordillera is a long range of short mountains and valleys that are a defining characteristic of Chile. Sculptors, painters, and writers describe the mountain as a substance for art and an inspiration, “the material of dreams.” Guzmán describes it as a “gateway” and says he feels closer to the past when near the mountains. Stones from the cordillera line a street where protestors once marched and were beaten during the Pinochet regime. In the present the same stones contain the names of victims, and there are close-ups of several of the names. The stones on the street are just the surface and small fragment of a large mountain range and of a larger story in Chile’s past.
The cordillera becomes a symbol of Guzmán’s own memory and the power of the past. In an interview with Variety, Guzmán described this documentary as being about the “essence of the soul. Here there’s more of my voice than in the others.”1 Here more than in any of the other documentaries in the trilogy, Guzmán tells stories of his own childhood, feelings of isolation, and sadness. He talks lovingly of the cordillera, and his deep sadness that Chile will not acknowledge the human cost of the Pinochet dictatorship.
Visually Guzmán connects the macro sized world of Chile’s geography directly to the individual. At the very beginning of Nostalgia for the Light Guzmán quickly transitions from a giant telescope, to the surface of the moon, and then back to a small house where he recollects his own childhood love of astronomy. This helps establish a pattern in the rest of the documentary that emphasizes how individuals are connected to the stars and wider universe. At the start of The Pearl Button this vast transition from micro to macro occurs again as we go from seeing a bubble of water in a piece of quartz to the desert full of giant satellites, to the ocean, and finally to outer space. In The Cordillera of Dreams the transition is from a wide shot of the cordillera, to a matchbox with a painted picture of the mountains, and then to the exterior of Guzmán’s childhood home. By connecting these images Guzmán connects the cordillera to the memories of his childhood. These transitions show that these large scale phenomenon all lead back to the individual, who gives them meaning.
The vastness of the natural world is also used to highlight the great struggle of the individual for justice and peace. The subjects of these documentaries search deserts, space, oceans, and mountains for answers. In Nostalgia for The Light there are several wide shots of the mothers searching in the desert. It is made clear how incredibly large the desert is and that those who disposed of the disappeared took great pains to hide their bodies. Some of the women have been looking for years and have been fortunate enough to discover some remains of their loved ones. In The Pearl Button, the diver continues another challenging search in the depths of the ocean to find decayed rails with only tiny remains of the disappeared. In The Cordillera of Dreams the cameraman Pablo Salas is surrounded by a mountain of tapes that contain years of footage of street protests, and then he is seen holding his camera in front of soldiers and tanks. When the camera pans to show the expanse of tapes and then fades to the Cordillera, it is clear that Guzmán is trying to associate the cordillera with the memories of important events in the past. By contrasting his individual subjects against enormous physical spaces and obstacles, Guzmán emphasizes the power of their determination and importance of their struggle to preserve the past.
These three documentaries are a spiritual and moving reckoning with Chile’s dark past. The tragic loss of the indigenous peoples and the victims of the Pinochet dictatorship are put on the same level of magnitude as the grand geography and views of the cosmos that define Chile. They are a memorable chapter in Guzmán’s lifelong effort to ensure that Chileans and the world never forget the past and its enduring mark on the present.
STREAMING: All three documentaries are available to watch on OVID. Nostalgia for The Light and The Cordillera of Dreams are available to rent on Amazon. The Pearl Button is available on Kanopy, a free streaming service available through your library or university.
Mayorga, Emilio. “IDFA Guest of Honor Patricio Guzmán on Chilean Soul and Mountains.” Variety, 19 Nov. 2019, https://variety.com/2019/film/festivals/idfa-patricio-guzman-the-cordillera-of-dreams-1203220444/.