Nostalgia for the Light Reviews
Anthony L
Super Reviewer
September 17, 2012
Nostalgia for the Light is a speculative and dream-like documentary mixing archaeology and astrology but explaining that they are one and the same. Patricio Guzmán also uses Chile's history from Pre-Colombian sheppards, 19th century explorers and miners and victims of Pinochet's regime to further explain the need to look into our past to see into the future. The fact that the Pre-Colombian Shepperd's drawings are on rocks close to the Chilean observatory, with the mummies of explorers close by and that the area is frequented by the mothers and wives of the victims of the nearby concentration camp who are looking for what remains they can find (often small fragments of bone) just helps to paint this picture of the history of everything in such a small and arid place in the most haunting and beautiful way. My only wish is that I'd seen this on the big screen. Herzog's documentaries are my favourite but this comes a close second.
Harlequin68
Super Reviewer
September 29, 2012
"Nostalgia for the Light" is an impressive and powerful cine-essay from Patricio Guzman that is marred only by some unnecessary effects work, especially considering the naturally spectacular Atacama Desert of Chile which resembles Mars on display.(So, I would not be surprised if it has ever been used as a location for a science fiction movie.) Its height of 5,000 meters is optimum for the use of telescopes to look backwards into the history of the cosmos.(To the film's credit, there is one astoundingly mindbending bit of metaphysics arguing that due to the speed of light, there is no true present.) As we are informed, this is in a country that going back to colonial times has had a problem with how it views its past. This continues to the present day's challenges with how it deals with the mass killings committed under the Pinochet dictatorship. With the desert's total lack of humidity(the only place on earth like this), it preserves ancient artifacts extremely well, not to mention more recent bodies that were dumped there(one is found during filming) in the hope of never being found again. However, an intrepid group of volunteers carry on their neverending search to find closure for themselves and loved ones. In the end, one has to come to terms with the past before one can look to the future and maybe eventually to the stars.
Mark A
Super Reviewer
September 28, 2011
Beautiful cinematography and incredible views of the universe, but this film lacked focus and tried maybe a little too hard to draw parallels between astronomy, archaeology and the search for traces of those who were "disappeared" during the reign of terror that occurred in Chile under Pinochet. By casting such a wide net, the filmmakers wound up only able to scratch the surface of any of these three topics. The setting was the arid desert in the Chilean highlands, Atacama, the most arid place on earth. This is where NASA conducted experiments for its mars mission, as the climate most closely approximates the conditions on the red planet. This lends itself to near-perfect conditions for stargazing and also provides an environment where bodies are naturally mummified. The filmmakers aim was noble. This film failed to live up to its promise.
Hassan V
Super Reviewer
July 18, 2012
This is a documentary embraced and draped in total respect, beauty and profound contemplation. It is an essay, a cinematic spectacle, a tribute to the dead, a tribute to the stars and Herzog-esque in its form of creative documentary. Try to catch this if you ever see it playing and I need to seek out more of this directors work!
Blaster1618
Super Reviewer
October 4, 2011
The point when I turned it off was when you learn the one woman had found the foot and portion of the scull of here brother several years ago and she was still looking for more pieces. Also the keep flashing back to the astronomer asking him questions about the women and Chile's brutal history.
The movie is built around a metaphor about history/time. The astronomy half is aesthetically appealing. The second half is languid interviews with 5 women who have dedicated 30+ years of their lives searching for the remains of relatives. I made it about half way through the second part and turned it off.
The point when I turned it off was when you learn the one woman had found the foot and portion of the scull of here brother several years ago and she was still looking for more pieces. Also the keep flashing back to the astronomer asking him questions about the women and Chile's brutal history.
fischrule
January 10, 2013
A truly stunning documentary, I'm not sure I've ever seen a more beautifully filmed one.
January 2, 2013
A documentary that describes the ancient and current mysteries of creation and return to creator through the lens of Chilean Telescopes, and the survivors of Chilean oppression and genocide. The story is Chile's first, but a completely complementary allegory to each of us and our infinitesimally fleeting moment of consciousness.
"I am convinced that memory has a gravitational force that is constantly attracting us. Those who have a memory are able to live in the fragile present moment. Those who have none don't live anywhere." Patricio Guzmán, Writer/Director
A documentary that describes the ancient and current mysteries of creation and return to creator through the lens of Chilean Telescopes, and the survivors of Chilean oppression and genocide. The story is Chile's first, but a completely complementary allegory to each of us and our infinitesimally fleeting moment of consciousness.
gillianren
October 23, 2012
Yes, okay, this is the second movie I've reviewed in a week that involves knowing something about the dark history of South America of the twentieth century. However, is that wrong? Should we have such an isolated, insulated view of history that we don't know what happened in our own hemisphere in our own lifetimes? (Those of you under twenty are somewhat excused!) It's not quite so bad as when I had to explain to someone who had lived in the United States for his entire life what McCarthyism is, but I do feel that we as a nation would be better served by paying a little attention to what goes on around us. And this is, of course, leaving out discussion of complicity in the various coups and civil wars. Certainly I think more people should know what role the CIA had in destabilizing many of the governments to our south, simply because we were afraid of a Communist foothold in Latin America.
The Atacama Desert is the driest place in the world. The air is thin and still. This makes it an ideal place to conduct two different kinds of searches into the past. It is an ideal place for astronomy, which is looking into the past because of the speed of light--by the time you see the light, the thing which produced it has moved on. It is an ideal place for archaeology; the bodies of the dead mummify, and their artifacts do not decay as easily as they do elsewhere. The saltpeter mines are largely preserved--and, director Patricio Guzmán tells us, were also used as concentration camps during the regime of Augusto Pinochet. Prisoners in these camps spent some time looking at the stars, but then they were forbidden to; they might use astronomy to escape. Now, their relatives comb the desert for what remains of the Disappeared they might find. Astronomer Gaspar Galaz points out that the Chilean people are more comfortable looking into the distant past than the recent past, which they want to let go.
It must be tempting to wish the dead would stay dead. Vicky Saavedra and Violeta Berríos search the desert for the remains of their loved ones, because they want certainty. However, for those who do not have Disappeared friends or family, there is a rejection of any responsibility for those acts. One of the special features on the disc includes an interview with a military man, a man who was part of the coup, who claims he doesn't want to compare the pain of the tortured with the pain of the torturer but proceeds to pretty much do just that. He acknowledges that he was part of the coup, that he still believes it was the right thing to do, and there he sits, looking comfortable and well pleased with himself, agreeing that he was part of the whole thing. The problem with just wanting to move on is that you never quite address what caused the thing to happen in the first place. You also create a class of people who never saw their grievances addressed and might want to take matters into their own hands.
And yet the comparison to astronomy almost makes you wonder what the point is. In the desert, they are finding scraps of bone so small that they cannot say for sure what kind of bone some of them are; in the desert, they are tracing the calcium content of stars. Calcium is not a very high percentage of a star's makeup, but those traces of calcium are still greater than all the bones of all the people on Earth, much less those fragments in the desert. One of the former prisoners, Luís Henríquez, says that the time in the camp that he spent studying astronomy let him feel free, even as he was imprisoned. In the cosmic scheme of things, the imprisonment of a human body is nothing. The universe does not care. On the other hand, the Pinochet regime wasn't exactly fond of science, and the fact that it wasn't fond of foreigners, either, also hampered the amount of science done. Science, after all, is about cooperation, and the Pinochet regime wasn't big on that, either.
They are building a radio telescope, there in that dry place. It is to look at traces of the Big Bang. (In Spanish, "[i]Big Bang[/i].") Even just looking at the Sun is looking eight minutes into the past; looking at the more distant stars is looking farther and farther. The Big Bang was billions of years ago. The earliest remnants of humans in the Atacama Desert can be traced to ten thousand years ago or more. There are the remains of camps build over a hundred years ago. There are the scraps of bone from within a human lifetime. One of the women searching for her loved one is seventy; when she and those like her die, how much effort will be put into searching the desert sands for the remains of those who left so little trace of themselves? We are told that the remains of many of the Disappeared were just dropped into the sea; even if the sea had left traces, it cannot be searched. It can be argued that the present does not exist; in the Atacama Desert, we search many types of the past instead.
A Desert at the Edge of Time
Yes, okay, this is the second movie I've reviewed in a week that involves knowing something about the dark history of South America of the twentieth century. However, is that wrong? Should we have such an isolated, insulated view of history that we don't know what happened in our own hemisphere in our own lifetimes? (Those of you under twenty are somewhat excused!) It's not quite so bad as when I had to explain to someone who had lived in the United States for his entire life what McCarthyism is, but I do feel that we as a nation would be better served by paying a little attention to what goes on around us. And this is, of course, leaving out discussion of complicity in the various coups and civil wars. Certainly I think more people should know what role the CIA had in destabilizing many of the governments to our south, simply because we were afraid of a Communist foothold in Latin America.
The Atacama Desert is the driest place in the world. The air is thin and still. This makes it an ideal place to conduct two different kinds of searches into the past. It is an ideal place for astronomy, which is looking into the past because of the speed of light--by the time you see the light, the thing which produced it has moved on. It is an ideal place for archaeology; the bodies of the dead mummify, and their artifacts do not decay as easily as they do elsewhere. The saltpeter mines are largely preserved--and, director Patricio Guzmán tells us, were also used as concentration camps during the regime of Augusto Pinochet. Prisoners in these camps spent some time looking at the stars, but then they were forbidden to; they might use astronomy to escape. Now, their relatives comb the desert for what remains of the Disappeared they might find. Astronomer Gaspar Galaz points out that the Chilean people are more comfortable looking into the distant past than the recent past, which they want to let go.
It must be tempting to wish the dead would stay dead. Vicky Saavedra and Violeta Berríos search the desert for the remains of their loved ones, because they want certainty. However, for those who do not have Disappeared friends or family, there is a rejection of any responsibility for those acts. One of the special features on the disc includes an interview with a military man, a man who was part of the coup, who claims he doesn't want to compare the pain of the tortured with the pain of the torturer but proceeds to pretty much do just that. He acknowledges that he was part of the coup, that he still believes it was the right thing to do, and there he sits, looking comfortable and well pleased with himself, agreeing that he was part of the whole thing. The problem with just wanting to move on is that you never quite address what caused the thing to happen in the first place. You also create a class of people who never saw their grievances addressed and might want to take matters into their own hands.
And yet the comparison to astronomy almost makes you wonder what the point is. In the desert, they are finding scraps of bone so small that they cannot say for sure what kind of bone some of them are; in the desert, they are tracing the calcium content of stars. Calcium is not a very high percentage of a star's makeup, but those traces of calcium are still greater than all the bones of all the people on Earth, much less those fragments in the desert. One of the former prisoners, Luís Henríquez, says that the time in the camp that he spent studying astronomy let him feel free, even as he was imprisoned. In the cosmic scheme of things, the imprisonment of a human body is nothing. The universe does not care. On the other hand, the Pinochet regime wasn't exactly fond of science, and the fact that it wasn't fond of foreigners, either, also hampered the amount of science done. Science, after all, is about cooperation, and the Pinochet regime wasn't big on that, either.
They are building a radio telescope, there in that dry place. It is to look at traces of the Big Bang. (In Spanish, "[i]Big Bang[/i].") Even just looking at the Sun is looking eight minutes into the past; looking at the more distant stars is looking farther and farther. The Big Bang was billions of years ago. The earliest remnants of humans in the Atacama Desert can be traced to ten thousand years ago or more. There are the remains of camps build over a hundred years ago. There are the scraps of bone from within a human lifetime. One of the women searching for her loved one is seventy; when she and those like her die, how much effort will be put into searching the desert sands for the remains of those who left so little trace of themselves? We are told that the remains of many of the Disappeared were just dropped into the sea; even if the sea had left traces, it cannot be searched. It can be argued that the present does not exist; in the Atacama Desert, we search many types of the past instead.
October 13, 2012
A film that is difficult to watch in parts but well worth the effort. It should leave you feeling sad but somehow it's actually uplifting.
Harlequin68
Super Reviewer
September 29, 2012
"Nostalgia for the Light" is an impressive and powerful cine-essay from Patricio Guzman that is marred only by some unnecessary effects work, especially considering the naturally spectacular Atacama Desert of Chile which resembles Mars on display.(So, I would not be surprised if it has ever been used as a location for a science fiction movie.) Its height of 5,000 meters is optimum for the use of telescopes to look backwards into the history of the cosmos.(To the film's credit, there is one astoundingly mindbending bit of metaphysics arguing that due to the speed of light, there is no true present.) As we are informed, this is in a country that going back to colonial times has had a problem with how it views its past. This continues to the present day's challenges with how it deals with the mass killings committed under the Pinochet dictatorship. With the desert's total lack of humidity(the only place on earth like this), it preserves ancient artifacts extremely well, not to mention more recent bodies that were dumped there(one is found during filming) in the hope of never being found again. However, an intrepid group of volunteers carry on their neverending search to find closure for themselves and loved ones. In the end, one has to come to terms with the past before one can look to the future and maybe eventually to the stars.
August 8, 2012
Beautiful, moving, interesting in parts, but the voice over so portentous, the parallels between searching the skies and the desert so overworked that it's a fail, though I feel an insensitive heel for saying so.
Hassan V
Super Reviewer
July 18, 2012
This is a documentary embraced and draped in total respect, beauty and profound contemplation. It is an essay, a cinematic spectacle, a tribute to the dead, a tribute to the stars and Herzog-esque in its form of creative documentary. Try to catch this if you ever see it playing and I need to seek out more of this directors work!
May 6, 2011
Really interesting juxtapositions between astronomy and Pinochet's massacres. The film itself drags quite a bit at times, but the content is important and underrepresented in the media.
Claudia P.
May 25, 2012
People can find hope in every little thing and build up a strenght that can leave you breathless... A sad history about women that fight until the end for justice and peace of mind, for things that shouldn´t happen.
SarfarazAbbasi
May 18, 2012
Filmed at Atacama Desert of Chile (notable for Mars-like soil, and clear sky, where scientists from various countries come to observe sky). Patricio shows similarities between astronomers' quest of celestial bodies, and women who are searching for remains of their relatives in Atacama Desert. As scientists of astronomy are engaged in observing movements of stars thousands miles away through large telescopes at observatory, women are busy searching remains of their loved ones. Being fan of astronomy myself, I actually find this documentary gripping and impact-full. Remarkably exceptional documentary, that does keep the theme of the title word 'Nostalgia', thrusting us back into fine preserved memory of ancient lives, and sparkling galaxy.
This documentary from Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzman, forces us to rethink about fundamental basis of astronomy and to understand importance of memory of human-beings. Patricio highlights horrors of dictatorship of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, under his dictatorship, thousands of political prisoners civilians were executed, either dumped to seas, or buried in mass-graves, and how some Chilean women are still searching for the remains of their loved ones.
Filmed at Atacama Desert of Chile (notable for Mars-like soil, and clear sky, where scientists from various countries come to observe sky). Patricio shows similarities between astronomers' quest of celestial bodies, and women who are searching for remains of their relatives in Atacama Desert. As scientists of astronomy are engaged in observing movements of stars thousands miles away through large telescopes at observatory, women are busy searching remains of their loved ones. Being fan of astronomy myself, I actually find this documentary gripping and impact-full. Remarkably exceptional documentary, that does keep the theme of the title word 'Nostalgia', thrusting us back into fine preserved memory of ancient lives, and sparkling galaxy.
