It’s challenging and/or impossible to speak about Chilean art and disassociate it from Chilean politics— the two are forever tragically intertwined, bonded together by trauma in a way that few modern countries have experienced. Because Chile suffered a collective social trauma in the 1970s, the country has never recovered and still grapples with it today. A military coup—sanctioned by the U.S. government and Henry Kissinger—overthrew a democratically elected socialist government, murdered the President and plunged the country into chaos and a dictatorship for 17 years. Political dissidents and protesters disappeared, never to be heard from again; families were destroyed, frightening military curfews were implemented, activists were killed, and people feared for their lives.
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Oscar-nominated Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi’s (“The Mole Agent”) heartbreaking new documentary, “The Eternal Memory,” is not really about any of this directly. However, as centered on the life of former Chilean journalist and TV host Augusto Góngora and his wife Paulina Urrutia, like a lot of Chilean art, “The Eternal Memory” cannot help but be informed, tainted, scarred, and traumatized by those events (full disclosure: I am Chilean, my family fled the country to get away from the dictatorship when I was a child and while I experienced no such traumas directly, my parents and extended family certainly did, and the collective pains of those experiences have always orbited my life).
Produced by Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain, a big show of co-signing on Alberdi’s talents, not that they’re not already established—she was Oscar-nominated for “The Mole Agent”— “The Eternal Memory” is essentially about the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s disease, the power of love, and the resonance of memory as it fades way and sometimes springs back to life. And it’s a powerful, bruising film that will leave you crestfallen yet encouraged by the supremacy of adoration and tenderness.
The film opens with Góngora on a bed, Paulina, his partner of 20-something years and wife for about three, explaining to him who she is. At this point in the film, the going-in blind viewer doesn’t know their relationship yet either, but soon, as the gentle, curious questioning continues—do you remember this moment? Do you know who this is?—it becomes clear that Paulina is Góngora’s romantic partner, and she’s trying to lift him out of the fog of Alzheimer’s.
“The Eternal Memory” essentially charts the past and present paths. The past centers on the context of who Góngora was—a preeminent writer, correspondent, TV broadcaster, and cultural commentator, who reported on all things in Chile, including its political tumult, the social upheaval it caused, and the pain and suffering that lasted for decades for families. These families often never received closure, demanding justice for their missing, and presumed dead loved ones and these wounds scarred the nation’s psyche for years.
All this context shouldn’t shortchange Urrutia, a well-regarded film and TV actress, academic, theatre director, trade union leader, and for several years, Minister of the National Council of Culture and the Arts of Chile. And, a hell of an understanding, sympathetic partner.
The present tense narrative of ‘Eternal Memory’ is much more harrowing. Góngora is seen slowly losing his memory, maybe his mind, as he howls in a confused rage about what is happening to him and Urrutia—displaying Herculean amounts of compassion and patience—trying to help her partner through these moments of misperception, anger, paranoia, fear, and despair. ‘Eternal Memory’ is genuinely heartbreaking in these sequences, somehow fly-on-the-wall intimate enough to unobtrusively document deeply personal moments that most cameras never capture. Their daily challenges have ups and downs as the decay of the brain and recollection grows, and yet these affectionate bonds seem only to grow stronger.
As past and present intermingle, crossfade, and coexist, Alberdi’s poignant doc blossoms into something profoundly moving, melancholy, generous, and empathetic in its own right. And the way the past and present synchronize—there’s a breathtakingly brutal moment where Góngora suddenly recalls children witnessing protestors being killed on the streets of Chile—that will cleave your heart in two. All the suffering that the nation endured that he experienced and carried in his heart seems to flood back like a rush of memory, and the curse of bearing witness also suggests memory is a fluid, complicated thing. Góngora is desperate to recall his life, all the moments he’s cherished, and yet, the past is filled with landmines of trauma that are almost too painful to forget.
Ultimately, while incredibly sad and hard to bear in moments—especially when Góngora is so lost, despairing, and on a rampage and poor Urrutia is helplessly trying to navigate the eye of this emotional hurricane—“The Eternal Memory” is a beautiful and affecting love story that reveals an amazing partnership, a relationship so impressive, so loving, it may make you weep in awe.
MTV Documentary Films just bought the rights to the film and is planning a theatrical and awards campaign for the doc later this year, and that tracks. It’s a striking and intimate piece of cinema, a heartrending tale of living with and battling neurological disorders, the love necessary to endure it, and the anguished dolor of remembrance. [A]
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