The camera frames the colossal, revolving cogs of a giant telescope; the opening shot of Patricio Guzmán’s stunning film is an imposing symbol of Man’s invention and our abiding curiosity to discover meaning in our existence. Nostalgia for the Light is a significant documentary that, through contemplating time and space, laments the recent history of a nation that has concealed a harrowing past.
The Atacama Desert, the world’s driest place, is mankind’s portal to discovery. Monumental pillars of technology stand over the Mars-like terrain, gazing rigidly in to the sky. The largest and most potent telescopes ever-made, erected in 1977, inspect the heavens as astronomers gather in the aridness to decipher the history of the universe. Tragically, the desert is also the scene of a recent horror of Chilean history. It is heartbreakingly ironic that the concentration camps that occupied the land are as unknown as the cosmological abyss that the scientists explore.
Under General Pinochet’s regime it is estimated that between 1,500 and 2,000 Chileans were killed or disappeared. Secret mass graves, strewn out across the vast desert, were quarried in the Atacama. Today, the bereaved continue to search for the remnants of their loved-ones in order to find some sort of peace. The horror has been banished from Chile’s collective memory.
Nostalgia for the Light is a documentary that transcends the form. It is a film with striking visual beauty that captures desert vistas and awe-inspiring constellations of astral galaxies. The figurative immensity of the cosmos and the astronomical machinery of the gargantuan telescopes evoke an impression of The Tree of Life and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Although intensely cinematic, it is the muted, heart-rending political study of Chile that truly devastates.
Guzmán’s documentary has a literary quality that stems from its use of metaphor and an affecting narration. Like much of Latin American literature – including Pablo Neruda and Isabella Allende in Chile – realising the root of a national identity and remembering the traumas of history is at its heart.
The vibrant symbolism of the astronomers searching for meaning makes the interviews with the bereaved even more painfully real. There is, perhaps, an opaque solace in the knowledge that they both endeavour to discover the past.
Guzmán – a profound filmmaker and historian – tells a story that needed to be told, with the utmost respect, ambition and poignancy.
Nostalgia for the Light is released on DVD 10th September 2012.
Director: Patricio Guzmán
Stars: Gaspar Galaz, Lautaro Núñez, Luís Henríquez
Runtime: 90 mins
Country: France, Germany, Chile, Spain, USA
Film Rating: 
