On February 27th 2010, the central coasts of Chile were struck by a violent
earthquake which killed more than five hundred people and damaged about
500.000 buildings. Three weeks later, once the state of shock started to wear off,
José Luis Torres Leiva went to shoot some footage in the areas that had been hit.
We follow him in a devastated land, through a chaos of rubble, boards torn to pieces
and buildings ripped apart. Everywhere around, the landscape – like this road,
limply collapsed in part - tells us how hostile, inhabitable it has become: here, there
is no country anymore. Yet, the film never indulges in horror and its useless
grandiloquence, neither does it entertain any apocalyptic fascination. This won’t
come as a surprise to those who are familiar with the director’s previous films (FID
2006 and 2008). It is something altogether different that José Luis Torres Leiva
wishes to grasp. Or to offer. Mostly a touch of gentleness, either in face close-ups,
or when filming the sad ballet of mechanical shovels in the distance.
Because part of the tragedy comes from the fact that after the earthquake, there is
still more damage to be done, the task left unfinished by the cataclysm has to be
completed. But painful as this destruction after the destruction might be, it is also
the first step of a long mourning process. Images are in line with this paradoxical
movement: not as observers, but like a cortege of silently weeping mourners.
(NF&JPR)