Nostalgia For The Light (Patricio Guzman, 2010): France, Germany, Chile

Reviewed by Katie Funk. Viewed at the Metro 4, Santa Barbara.

In the documentary Nostalgia For The Light (Nostalgia De La Luz), by director Patricio Guzman, we are taken on a visual and emotional roller-coaster through the night skies and desert lands of the massive Chilean Atacama desert. This desert is so expansive and has so little light pollution that astronomers have found it to be a haven for viewing the night skies since the late 1970’s. This desert is also noted for being one of the driest places on Earth helping to ensure clear skies for the observations to take place. As we are taken on an immensely pleasurable cinematographic journey using images from the telescopes and of the telescopes themselves, we are brought into a world that is far greater than our own. One cannot help but to be fascinated by our expansive solar system and the astronomers that give us their input is also equally as fascinating. They remind us that we are stardust, that the calcium in our bones is the same calcium that is in the stars and was created at the same time as our universe. These astronomers are on a constant quest into our far distant past all the while linking it to the present.

The other half of this documentary’s story, brings us to a similar quest into the past but this time by the surviving women of long gone prisoners of Pichocet’s regime. They are on a search quite similar to the astronomers, searching in the present for clues from the past in the form of calcium in an expansive desert that were once the bones of their loved ones. These women have been out searching the Atacama desert for decades in a place that seems to be as large as the universe itself. Their search has not always been in vain although it seems it would be so considering just how large the desert truly is. Over the years they have as amateur archaeologists discovered small bits of human bone and some have even located their loved ones finally giving rest to their burning quest for answers.

This documentary was beautiful in the aspect of being in complete awe of the universe and in a way made seem like what these women were searching for didn’t have much point in the end. They spent their lives living in the past the same way the astronomers did but their lives were not being lived in a healthy mindset. The answers were there but they were not satisfied until they had a single bone saying that “this is your husband/brother/etc”. Coupled alongside the astronomers viewpoint that our bones are the same calcium in the stars it seems that one cannot be “found” just by locating a calcium deposit somewhere in the sand. One is found through realization of where one comes from in the first place. The fact that these two completely parallel and alternate universes are taking place along side of each other was very compelling. It was beautiful to see the women in the end getting a chance to peer into the heavens through one of the massive telescopes. Perhaps it finally gave them a different perspective as to where we all came from and the idea to start looking up for answers instead of down.