Filmmaker Patricio Guzmán explores the nature of time—and its human corollaries history, memory, and mourning—through the lens of the Atacama Desert in his native Chile, one of the most arid environments on Earth. Through lyrical voice-over, stunningly rendered landscapes, evocative astronomical cinematography, and candid and pensive interviews, this quiet, meditative work examines the constellation of artifacts and meanings resident in the remarkably limpid sky above and the unusually dry earth below the desert. The remarkable climactic circumstances in Atacama lure astronomers observing ancient light from ancient stars, archeologists studying the well-preserved artwork and mummified remains of pre-Columbian cultures, and families searching for the desecrated bones and bodies of dissidents who disappeared during the violent Pinochet regime and were hastily abandoned there. This languorous and gorgeously photographed film reveals and revels in the poetics of science, offering a haunting, impressionistic ontology of nostalgia and place, with tonal echoes of Andrei Tarkovsky and Chris Marker but a style that Guzmán owns and inhabits.

(Full Frame)