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A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Blistering performances.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Who but Patricio Guzman would match the political woes, abuses and lasting traumas of Augusto Pinochet's regime with the philosophical questioning of a group of astronomers studying the vast universe from Atacama Desert in Chile. The tenuous connection, as the documentary states, is their shared study of bodies; one ravaging the desert sands for the remains of their loved ones and the other scanning the skies for the larger, celestial wonders. And yet in some ways, Guzman has made the two narratives similar in their evocations of time passing and what those spaces are filled with. We know, for example, that some of the galaxies and stars that the astronomer's massive telescopes are pointed at are so far away that even light's travelling speed does not escape the passing of time; like the Pillars of Creation, these bodies may have already been eroded at the moment of study. So in a sense, both these groups are studying the past, but they move in different directions with each discovery. Guzman's voice-over narration is the filter in which we judge these events. It's words are not light; in fact they are full of philosophical posturing and grandiose, sometimes pretentious ideas and metaphors about the very nature of discovery and the vastness of the universe. The problem is that it also affords the victims of Pinochet the same tone - the flowery, poetic language describing the heavenly bodies in the skies and in the furthest reaches of the galaxies and beyond is also applied to the bodies and minerals buried in the sands of the desert. The cinematography here, when not concerned with authenticity and vigorously shaking the camera whilst it follows these human beings in their daily activities, tries to match the majesty of the time-lapses of the stars and the supernovas flying by, but of course that is impossible, so to substitute Guzman awkwardly inserts archival footage to attempt a power balance. But not before he gives an exhumed corpse the same insufferable treatment: a slow, meandering gaze, the camera moving as patiently as possible, as if to milk every last drop of profundity even as we do not hold the same emotional perspective as the real victims and their loved ones. Much of the documentary is filled with these moments. The opening is the agonisingly long sequence of events of machinery and gears grinding and whirring around to begin another day of stargazing. And in the end too, it seems to facilitate the same objective, but also the joining of the two groups in a mutual admiration of the stars. It adds what I assume is a digital effect, portraying the very essence of being caressed by star dust, little golden particles floating around in the air. This does not look particularly convincing - it instead renders a magical, fairytale like effect. For all the faux awe-inspiring images this film gives us, none are as effective as the simple recount from Valentina, who is amongst those still mourning the unseen losses from Pinochet's dictatorship. She connects the two strands much better than any whispered, ostentatious figurative language could. It is not a link that hurtles across universal spaces to force a similarity but rather a personal, determined one, borne out of her own grief and emotional bargaining. There is not a hint of posturing here. The same might not be said of her grandparents, whose director's staging instructions were probably 'stare silently and forlornly at the camera'.

A painting that unites astronomy, the present, the past and the collective memory of a people. A story you through from end to end and leaves you vibrating in a note holding and is resonating very hard in the chest. How to join two things as seemingly dissimilar as astronomy and the search for a past that still bleeds and want silent but still present. The astronomers point their telescopes to the huge big sky of Atacama to find new galaxies, stars lost or the same origin of the universe, and the telescope is pointing Guzman inward consciousness of a people and of horror to keep the memory alive.Thanks Patrick for this film as needed.

The Atacama Desert in Chile is believed to be one of the driest places in the world. Some of its river beds have not seen water for more than 120,000 years. Because of its high altitude, nearly non-existent cloud cover, dry air, and lack of light pollution and radio interference from the very widely spaced cities, the desert is one of the best places in the world to conduct astronomical observations.As a result, the world's astronomers flock to the Atacama to gaze out into the universe and to search for evidence and artifacts from the beginning of time. These "archaeologists of time" decompose the stars into their constituent elements one of which is calcium. Elsewhere in the desert, other "archaeologists" search among the pebbles and dust for evidence of calcium. They are looking for bones. Or at least fragments of bones. They are the mothers, brothers, sisters and wives of Chile's disappeared. During Pinochet's military dictatorship many thousands of Chileans were abducted and killed and their bodies disposed of in the Atacama. Forty years later their relatives still search the desert for any sign or bone fragment that might give a clue to where their loved ones lie.Patricio Guzman juxtaposes these two sets of archaeologists in his beautiful documentary, "Nostalgia for the Light". In many ways they both seek answers to the same question. They try to find the true meaning of life. There are some very moving scenes in this movie. In one, a lady in her seventies sits in the desert, in tears, and proclaims that she will never stop looking for the remains of her loved one. In the other, a young Chilean astronomer, whose parents were killed by the government when she was only one, clutches her new born baby (this scene is just wonderful). She displays the transcendent wisdom of someone of far greater years as she explains how she has, through her work and observations, come to terms with their murder.An unmissable movie.http://sofia-notes.blogspot.com/2011/09/nostalgia-for-light.html

This beautiful film will capture you emotionally, visually and intellectually. Patricio Guzmán's examination of light—its relationship to the past and what it illuminates of the future—is stunningly beautiful, insightful and very well shot. A scientist states early on in the film that there is no present only the past and future as the words he is forming with his mouth have already happened by the microsecond it takes for his voice to travel from his mouth to his subject's ears. It is this sort of abstract thought that permeates the films dialogue creating the mood.