The Pearl Button

A trilogy of masterpieces.

I have previously shared my thoughts on Patricio Guzmán’s first two documentary films in the series—Nostalgia for the Light and The Pearl Button. The final one, The Cordillera of Dreams, has now arrived in NYC movie theaters.

Guzmán was present for the screening of The Pearl Button I attended in London back in 2016. He mentioned then that his next film, the third in the series, would focus on the Andes (Cordillera de los Andes), the mountains that rise above and delineate the inland border of his beloved Chile.

Guzmán left Chile in 1973, following the coup that marked the beginning of Pinochet’s dictatorship. The Cordillera of Dreams, similar to the others in the trilogy, is a philosophical reflection and meditation on the director’s estranged homeland (he has not lived there since his 1973 departure) through the lens of both landscape and history. We do not see Guzmán throughout the documentary but his presence is keenly felt through the self-narration. The cinematography—predictably sublime—moves between the majestic mountain peaks and valleys of the Cordillera and the tragic footage of the violent struggle experienced by protestors during the Pinochet regime. The mountains appear as both protector of the country that they overshadow and powerless witness of the atrocities experienced by the nation’s people.

The Cordillera of Dreams is infused with metaphor and anthropomorphisms. Guzmán states:

“Santiago receives me with indifference.”

I left my homeland by choice rather than necessity, yet I think I understand what Guzmán means. The Ireland that I grew up in is almost recognizable compared to the one I witness today from afar. When I do return to my homeland, I am no longer part of its fabric, my presence in a sense immaterial and superfluous.

Guzmán interviews writers and artists who remained in Chile throughout its turbulent times. I am in awe, not only of their courage in staying put, but also of the depth of the connection they maintain with their homeland. Although he left Chile so many years ago, The Cordillera of Dreams is indeed testament to the fact that Guzmán himself has also never truly strayed far from his beloved country.

One of my heroes, the director Patricio Guzman was in London this week for the screening of his latest film The Pearl Button. It has been four years since his harrowing masterpiece Nostalgia for the Light (reviewed here). During that time he has been exploring the Patagonia hinterland of his native Chile.

The Pearl Button bears many of the hallmarks of Guzman’s earlier works. It is extraordinarily – and eerily – beautiful. Sublime feels appropriate. The landscape of Patagonia – the coastline, the ocean itself, the mountains, the lakes – is breathtaking, and the cinematography does it poetic justice and more. Guzman creates a world, interweaving narrative and images, where the history of the indigenous people of Patagonia, and their tragic fate at the hands of invaders and settlers at the beginning of the 20th century, is slowly revealed. Rich in metaphor – water, sky, planets, infinity – The Pearl Button is a story of loss, not only of the Patagonian people and their culture, but more recently – 1970s and 1980s – of those thousands who died during the Pinochet regime, and whose bodies were dumped anonymously forever in the ocean. It is almost impossible to comprehend the cruelty of not only killing loved ones, but to compound the grief of those left behind by deliberately denying them the possibility of burying their dead.

Guzman confers an animate and almost spiritual significance to water. It contains secrets, and ‘colluded’ with the atrocities that Pinochet sought to keep hidden. The exiled Guzman continues his work in The Pearl Button of revealing these secrets, and of exposing the horror of the dictator’s regime.

During the Q&A after the screening, Guzman confirmed that a further film will complete the trilogy, this time about the Andes and its people.

Good news, indeed.

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The Cordillera of Dreams

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