In Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers peer deep into the cosmos in search for answers concerning the origins of life. Nearby, a group of women sift through the sand searching for body parts of loved ones, dumped unceremoniously by Pinochet's regime.
Nostalgie de la lumière, Nostalgie de la Lumière, Nostalgia della luce, Nostalgia da Luz, Ностальгия по свету, Νοσταλγώντας Το Φως, Lysets Nostalgi, Heimweh nach den Sternen, Tesknota za swiatlem, 故乡之光, 빛을 향한 그리움
France
Cannes Film Festival
USA
Portland International Film Festival
Italy
Biografilm Festival
France
Germany
USA
UK
Denmark
Italy
GreeceΚ
Ireland12
NetherlandsAL
Denmark
France
Germany
Greece
Ireland
Italy
Netherlands
UK
USA
Nostalgia for the Light feels like the blinding cosmic melancholia borrowed straight from Lars von Trier, mixed with Director Patricio Guzmán's deeply unaffected and personal love and compassion for the carefree Chilean childhood he can't go back again. If you think science and poetic beauty are mutually exclusive, watch this arthouse documentary and think again.
In this multi-layered documentary, Guzmán begs the question that shakes the soul: when human beings are busy looking at stars million lightyears away, can we stop for a minute just to take a look at ourselves? In the arid Atacama Desert, scientists focus on their star-gazing tasks, while families of murdered political prisoners are equally occupied by their own missions -- rediscovering the bodies of…
I love it when films feel like they were made for me. As a Hispanic American with heavy Chilean heritage and ancestry, whose mother escaped from Chile to the U.S. towards the beggining of Pinochet's rule, I feel like theirs a lot in this film that I was able to personally relate to. I may not have had the same exact experiences, but I still felt the pain within the words of those who lost loved ones to Pinochet's dictatorship government and the concentration camps. The distortions on space and time throughout Nostalgia for the Light were also incredibly interesting to witness and observe, allowing us to form a connection between the vastness of the universe and our own past…
An absolutely stunning film that manages to enrapture the viewer visually, emotionally and intellectually. The word poetic doesn't do it justice. Patricio Guzmán's examination of light gradually turns into a discourse on his country's troubled past and its uncertain future. Some of the most moving moments involve conversations with survivors of Pinochet's regime who continue to look for loved ones. But first and foremost this is a grand visual experience, magnificently shot and striking to behold.
stargazing as a means of freedom
stars, which share the calcium in our bones
looking at the past, looking for the past
Documentary as poetry. Nostalgia for the Light is a film of slow, lingering images, a documentary with a fascinating approach. It examines the horrors of man by looking at the stars. Time is relative and the present does not exist. Astronomers and archaeologists both spend their time examining the past. Nostalgia for the Light is partially about wanting to reach back into the past, through a desert presented as a time portal.
Part of the film's thesis is that Chile is a country which has hidden its past and forgotten its darkest moments. The era of Pinochet has not yet been reckoned with. Patricio Guzmán has dedicated his life to making films about such a time, and Nostalgia for the…
if you have ever watched a YouTube video essay about space this film should be in your watchlist
Nostalgia for the Light is a humbling documentary concerning the connectivity of universal principles of archaeology and astronomy.
Written and directed by Patricio Guzmán, it's quietly contemplative in its reflections on separations of the interruptions of time. It incorporates some stunning shots of the horizon and the vast emptiness of space into its concepts, the effects of which often represent almost hallucinogenic qualities. It focuses on an arid territory in western Chile to poetically delve into the social and political challenges which have confronted the country; parallelling two different examinations conducted in the region disclosed through a sequence of thoughtful interviews.
These include some astronomers gazing skyward for explanations to the universe thoughtfully juxtaposed with women surveying the ground underfoot, digging…
I would almost go as far as to say Nostalgia for the Light is rhythmically soothing, if not for the devastating subject matter than unfurls itself throughout its runtime. A really powerful, impactful intersection of science and emotion, forming into a vivid piece of documentary filmmaking that helps cement the stories of thousands of lost people. Thought-provoking and heart-stirring!
A documentary/rumination on memory, the past, the cosmos and Chile's place on it, with a special focus on the Atacama desert, and an examination of both the astronomers doing scientific work there with some of the world's largest telescopes, and the families trying to retrieve the dead who have been left behind after being disappeared during the Pinochet regime there.
The film opens with some nakedly autobiographical musings, set to poetic imagery, which establishes the tone, before moving into the role of history and the telescopes--it doesn't start to contrast the experiences of the astronomers searching the stars for answers to the mysteries of the universe with the women sifting through the dry sands of the Atacama to try and…
54/100
[originally written on my blog]
Bailed on this at Toronto 2010, mostly because I was disappointed that the initial rush of gorgeous imagery accompanied by solemn voiceover was supplanted by conventional talking-head interviews. But I see now why that was necessary: Had Guzmán not encouraged the astronomers to indulge his specious equivalence, the movie would have risked coming across as implicitly hostile to science, which was clearly not his intention. At the risk of seeming callous, I gotta say I'm not terribly...well, no, I am sympathetic toward the relatives (mostly women) who've dedicated their lives to finding the remains of the disappeared, but that doesn't mean I don't think them misguided, or see a (quasi-literal) world of difference between…
There is a particular scene of "Nostalgia for the Light" where a man says there is no present, it is already gone. And isn't that something simultaneously beautiful and tragic. Like a fleeting moment I cannot reach. I am trying to find something in the present, and once I understand it, then it's gone. And you may think, ok but if you want a cookie you can still get it. Ok sure, it's not necessarily that and it isn't exactly the scientific notion of looking at the sky and you're looking at the past, as the light that reaches us took its time to reach us. What it made me think about is the kind of things that are there…
