Doc Corner: Patricio Guzmán’s 'The Cordillera of Dreams'

By Glenn Dunks

Desert. Sky. Water. Mountains. Just the subjects alone suggest a nation of dichotomies. Patricio Guzmán’s most recent films about his troubled home-country of Chile have covered a lot of his people’s terrain. Capping a trilogy of documentaries that began with 2010’s Nostalgia for the Light and 2015’s The Pearl Button, The Cordillera of Dreams retains Guzmán’s searching and plaintive approach to Chile’s history as he poetically explores the connection between the Chilean people and the stretch of Andes mountains that surround the capital of Santiago.

The South American nation has remained a constant across his career despite living in exile since 1973 when his epic three-part The Battle of Chile was smuggled out of the country and premiered to extraordinary acclaim (he has lived in Europe ever since)...

It’s fair to say that like Rithy Panh and Cambodia, he is cinema’s principal documenter of Chile’s turbulent recent history and its lasting effects on contemporary society after himself having beared witness to the atrocities that forced them to escape. If this recent string of films has garnered him more attention, then perhaps it is more because our more globally connected world has finally opened its eyes, is more willing to listen, and able to reckon with the legacy of American-lead interference into international politics.

Guzmán doesn’t lay these themes out quite so easily for audiences. It seems to me that Cordillera is easily the weakest of this trilogy – although to call it “the weakest” is like a bit disingenuous, it’s just that Nostalgia and Button are among the very best works of non-fiction produced this past decade. Still, its message, delivered once again by Guzmán through eloquent and composed narration, may strike some as somewhat more opaque than before. Cordillera often oscillates between profound and pontificating more regularly than those earlier films; its message sometimes either too heavy in metaphor or too internalised so as to feel impenetrable.

At times, there is the suggestion that these mountains are like walls or barriers; a handy way of explaining why its people continue to be plagued by terror and trauma as it lauds the memories of Pinochet over its people (and under them, with cobble stone streets build from the stone of the Andes). At other times, Guzmán seems to suggest the mountains are a great constant, an unchanging force of strength that inspires art and rejuvenation and is a gateway to the world outside. A proud mark of the Chilean people’s unshakeable resilience in the face of earthquakes both natural and of flesh and blood. Even if the viewer may suspect at times like I did that Guzmán sees the Cordillera as more totemic symbol rather than a fully inspired narrative spine, one has to admire the sheer wells of emotion Guzmán is able to conjure out of a single image of his beloved Cordillera, captured here in beautiful, even dramatic photography by Samuel Lahu in his most high profile work to date.

Guzmán has clearly had his own reckoning with the memory of his homeland upon his returns to Chile in recent years. If the 78-year-old icon doesn’t make another documentary, then this feels like an appropriate place of self-reflection to end his stellar career. And if he doesn't, then like the night sky that hangs over the Atacama in Nostalgia for the Light, it’s all looks so clear now yet still with so much to explore and reveal.

Release: Out now in NYC, and out this week in LA before presumably expanding.

Oscar chances: Well, it was on last year's doc long-list, so won't be eligible. However, maybe it's time the Academy looked at Guzman for an honorary statue. He is 78, after all, and he's never even been nominated.

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