Nostalgia for the Light: This brilliant film from Chilean director Patricio Guzman succeeds on so many levels it is hard to summarize. It creates its own level, it's a miracle that exceeds the sum of its parts. Elegant commentary and dazzling images (of deserts, bones, moons, stars) attain a sort of harmonic convergence in which history, astronomy, and ethics align. In revealing the ecstatic relationships between human and celestial bodies, light, time, space and memory, Guzman manages as well to bring reason and compassion to bear upon his country's darkest and most secret crimes. It's a documentary - but it's also an astonishing work of art.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
SFIFF54: 'Nostalgia for the Light'
Nostalgia for the Light: This brilliant film from Chilean director Patricio Guzman succeeds on so many levels it is hard to summarize. It creates its own level, it's a miracle that exceeds the sum of its parts. Elegant commentary and dazzling images (of deserts, bones, moons, stars) attain a sort of harmonic convergence in which history, astronomy, and ethics align. In revealing the ecstatic relationships between human and celestial bodies, light, time, space and memory, Guzman manages as well to bring reason and compassion to bear upon his country's darkest and most secret crimes. It's a documentary - but it's also an astonishing work of art.
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Fresh out of the Lumiere Theatre in San Francisco, CA, I have to say that this film hit me hard. Being myself from Uruguay - a country that (like Argentina) shares a (sad) common recent history with Chile, meaning dictatorship and dissapeared political dissidents -- Patricio Guzman's film was for me very close and touched me deeply. In my opinion, the main points of the film are truth, justice, memory, and poetic light. The film is very precise, it doesn't stray out of the very diverse topics it touches, as it manages to put together archeology, astronomy, forensic studies, and politics.
ReplyDeleteIt is a film that seems very restrained in what it shows, very precise, and manages to amalgamate all these diverse subjects in a compelling way.
The most inspiring part is the one that shows the mothers of the dissapeared chilean citizens looking for the bones of their sons in the desert...Sophocles would feel proud of these women.
Loved the film