The Brooklyn Rail

I.

2018. Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman (2017) wins Best International Picture at the 90th Academy Awards. Chilean cinema is finally legitimate. At least to the eyes of those that doubted it for its entire history in Chile: politicians and common people alike. The award even feels like a celebration and culmination of almost a decade of “New Chilean Cinema” that had showcased filmmakers like Pablo Larraín, Sebastián Silva, and Lelio, who’ve gone on to explore cinema outside of their home territory.

II.

2011. Raúl Ruiz, the greatest Chilean director, dies. He was never nominated for an Oscar, nor considered for one, nor did he care about it. As revealed through his diaries, he didn’t even like attending film festivals and considered interviews with journalists to be a notch above a nuisance. Cinema scholars, artists, and fans mourn the loss of one of the most eclectic, baroque, and provocative filmmakers of the twentieth century. The In Memoriam segment at the 84th Academy Awards doesn’t include him.

III.

2024. Oscar nominations morning. Chilean documentary The Eternal Memory (La memoria infinita, 2023) by Maite Alberdi is nominated in the Best Documentary Feature category. Raúl Ruiz, thirteen years after his death, has managed to arrive at the Oscars. His images, his words, his voice, his art, will finally be featured and celebrated at the world’s most “fashionable” stage for cinema… in a roundabout way.

IV.

2004. Raúl Ruiz meets with Augusto Góngora, a journalist and TV presenter, who has managed to convince the higher-ups at Chilean public television to buy the rights to broadcast Ruiz’s latest Chilean projects: Días de campo (2004) and Cofralandes, rapsodia chilena (2002). Throughout the following years, Góngora and Ruiz’s relation would strengthen, climaxing in their collaboration on the miniseries La recta provincia, which premiered in 2007 on public TV (TVN) and which had Góngora both as executive producer and performer in a phantasmagorical bit role. The same approach was taken with Litoral in 2008, which also aired on TVN and had Góngora as producer mediating the relation between Ruiz and the network executives.

V.

2023. The Eternal Memory premieres at the Sundance Film Festival to an effusive reception. It features the daily life of Augusto Góngora and his wife, Paulina Urrutia (film, theater, and TV actress, as well as former minister of culture). Góngora has Alzheimer’s disease and at times he can’t quite remember who he is, where he is, or what he has done in his life.

Alberdi’s approach to the subject matter is direct, but that doesn’t mean it lacks emotion. There’s a clear preference on images that demonstrate the warmth and love that Góngora and Urrutia feel for each other: their embraces, the care, the way in which they look at each other. It’s been clear that Maite Alberdi likes to have complete control of what she shows and how she shows it in her career, from El Salvavidas (2011) forward. Yet, here it’s interesting how a real-world circumstance, like the pandemic, allows her to explore the idea of relegating her vision to someone else.

The film opens with an out-of-focus shot of Góngora in bed, waking up and being talked to by Paulina, who explains to him who he is, who she is, and where they are. In a way, this initial segment allows us to know who these people are (especially to audiences that haven’t lived in Chile in the past thirty to forty years), but the darkness of the shot and the way the camera never seems to find focus gives the scene an interesting although unplanned metaphor for what’s going through Góngora’s troubled mind. Slowly, light comes in and the image gets sharper, just as he becomes more aware of who he is and who he loves.

The precise and respectful way in which Alberdi portrays Góngora’s sickness works because it doesn’t shy away from its more uncomfortable moments, but at the same time doesn’t take advantage of them to provoke an easy reaction. Although emotional and filled with demonstrations of love, it’s also almost a manual on how to take care and handle someone with that kind of disability. Paulina is lovable, but harsh when it comes to what she needs from him and how she needs him to behave or act, even if he doesn’t fully understand all the time what’s happening.

Memory, of course, plays a big role in the narrative of the film, especially as it delves deeply into Góngora’s career as a journalist for the influential clandestine “newscast” Teleanálisis, which was made during the second half of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. It featured protests, news, and testimonies of people that weren’t allowed to talk publicly about the killings and disappearances that were happening during that time. The Eternal Memory shows us a young Góngora in that archival footage, speaking with traumatized people who’ve lost their families to the military, trying to preserve their memory. Then, the film cuts to his now clearly emaciated face, struggling to remember what happened and then realizing that some of his friends of that time were killed—some of them in front of his eyes.

Those moments, that speak to the significance of preserving the memory of what happened during the dictatorship and the important role that people like Góngora had in keeping those memories alive, are contrasted with the rest of his work, which focused on cultural TV. Among them was producing and presenting the TV show Hora 25, which Alberdi chooses to emphasize by showcasing Góngora’s interview with Raúl Ruiz.

To those who study and like Ruiz’s cinema, hearing him speak and reading his words is also part of the infinite pleasure that his work gives us. Suddenly, having an entire segment dedicated to Ruiz in the midst of the documentary feels both surprising and the only possible result. Ruiz’s influence on the new generation of Chilean filmmakers is telling, from their lack of adherence to the idea of a central conflict (something that Ruiz abhors from the start in his fundamental book Poetics of Cinema) to certain visual choices and editing style.

Ruiz appears talking at a table alongside Góngora, having coffee, speaking about his relation to Chile and cinema, then outside, walking around the main government buildings. There, they come across Chile’s flag. Ruiz blurts out: “The flag does have the face of a horse.” A Ruiz-ism if there ever was one (even if it is based on Pablo Neruda’s words when he was visiting Montevideo). When we cut back to Urrutia and Góngora’s recollection of Ruiz, they mention La recta provincia, though not for Góngora’s role as a producer, but as a performer.

Urrutia is brutally honest. She says how bad Góngora was as an actor. They both laugh. And then, we see it. The scene in which Augusto Góngora acts. Ruiz’s images feel like whiplash after seeing the precise documentary images from Alberdi. It immediately feels as if we’ve entered another atmosphere. Góngora’s pale complexion helps in selling the ghostly figure and (honestly, quite bad) performance, but it also allows those thirty seconds to travel more than they’ve ever traveled before, thanks to Alberdi’s decision to make a tribute to Ruiz’s importance to her and to Chilean culture.

VI.

2005. Augusto Góngora writes on his personal blog about a meeting he had with Raúl Ruiz. They speak about “the lying eye,” which is a literal translation from the French of Ruiz’s film Dark at Noon (1992). Ruiz answers that he wants to shake around Saint Thomas and question his “to see is to believe,” because Ruiz asks: “what happens if the eye lies?” Góngora tells Ruiz about a study done to sixty-six people who recovered their sight after being blind, and how they had to “learn how to see”, as they didn’t know nor have any frame of reference to understand what they were watching as light poured into their eyes for the first time. Góngora reflects at the end of his blog post: “The camera transforms into the eyes of the spectator. And when we watch the screen we’re voyeurs, but blind voyeurs that watch someone else’s desires.”

How are we supposed to react when we see Ruiz’s cinema inserted into someone else’s images? What are we supposed to think when we see Ruiz’s influence in The Eternal Memory and its less mediated approach, a less controlled visual intent, something akin to Ruiz’s imagery?

VII.

2023. Augusto Góngora dies four months after the world premiere of The Eternal Memory, four months before the Chilean commercial release. It becomes the most successful documentary in the history of Chilean cinema, the most watched film for weeks. Thousands of people cry and reflect on their own lives through the experience of Augusto and Paulina. Thousands of people also see Ruiz’s images, maybe for the first time. And now, Ruiz’s images, voice, and even his jokes are featured at the Oscars. Maybe it doesn’t matter that much, the Academy Awards don’t really matter in the scope of those who celebrate and enjoy Ruiz’s work. But, at least for a moment, let’s enjoy that thought. Raúl Ruiz finally arrives at the Oscars.