Grief work and transcendence of scalar dimensions in Patricio Guzmán and Terrence Malick’s movies
Martina Bortignon
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we present a comparative analysis of two movies, Nostalgia de la luz (2010), by Patricio Guzmán, and The tree of life (2011), by Terrence Malick, aiming at exploring the connection between the grief work for the loss of a loved one and scalar dimensions that exceed human scale, bringing forth, as a consequence, a sense of transcendence. We tell apart, in relation to the authorial subjectivity and the main characters, three key moments in grief evolution, based on what the movies represent: the search for a meaning, reparation and longing. Drawing upon the theory of scales, our hypothesis is that diverse scalar dimensions insert a perception of transcendence in this experience, adjusting and contributing to the grieving subject’s interiority reorganization and symbolization of loss.
Keywords: Terrence Malick; Patricio Guzmán; scales; grief; nature
Received: March 24, 2022; Accepted: April 09, 2022
Keywords:
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1“I just felt very light, and I don’t mean it in a good way, I felt very easily blown away. […] I’m changed, I cannot be the persona I was […] I’m much more aware of mortality […] Grieving is such a strange thing, and death itself is so final and so fundamentally unknowable that it feels like trying to make your way through this very dark, deep hole and there is this desire to not feel alone […]. This thing is horrible, but apparently is a thing that is universal, there’s people all over the world who is going through the same horrible thing”.
2Todas las traducciones a citas en un idioma distinto al español, presentes en el artículo, fueron realizadas por la autora (N. de T.)
3Me refiero con este término al caso chileno aquí analizado, en tanto la atención de la sociedad y de las políticas públicas de verdad, justicia, reparación y memoria van fluctuando dependiendo de los gobiernos en el poder e, inevitablemente, no logran acompañar de manera continuativa al sujeto dañado por la pérdida, el cual debe hacer frente al duelo también en su dimensión íntima.
4Patricio Guzmán (1941) es un cineasta chileno de renombre internacional. Abandonó el país en 1973 a raíz del golpe de Estado y se estableció en Francia. Fundó y preside el Festival Documental de Santiago. Sus documentales, entre los cuales La Batalla de Chile, El Caso Pinochet, Salvador Allende, fueron premiados en concursos internacionales; en particular, con Nostalgia de la Luz recibió el Gran Premio de la Academia del Cine Europea en 2010. A la fecha, ya completó la trilogía dedicada a la memoria inscrita en la naturaleza con El botón de nácar y La cordillera de los sueños.
5Terrence Malick, nacido en 1943, es un director de cine estadounidense. Con su obra, que ya cuenta con diez largometrajes, ganó innumerables galardones en los mayores festivales de todo el mundo (Concha de Oro, Oso de Oro, Palma de Oro, David di Donatello, nominaciones al Óscar, entre otros). Desde Badlands en 1973 hasta A hidden life en 2019, pasando por The new world en 2005, su obra ha celebrado la majestuosidad de la naturaleza trenzada a los sucesos humanos.
6El hermano de Malick se quitó la vida en 1968. Hay similitudes impactantes entre el personaje de la película y el hermano del director, entre las cuales la afición a la guitarra y la tendencia a hacerse daño si no lograba mantener el nivel de exigencia autoimpuesta (Beever & Cisney, 2016).
7“Human perceptual mesocosm, the world perceptible to our senses, between vast espanses of patterns energy and microscopic depths of atomic structure”.
8“The tendency to collapse scale occludes difference, suppressing the fundamental alterity of matter-energy’s constant flow of compositions and decompositions into new assemblages”.
9“A rhizome consisting of mediated detail and proliferating observation points rather than progressively purified observational distance”.
10“Externalize, publicize, and historicize traumatic material that would otherwise remain at the level of internal, individual psychology”.
11“Necessità, come aver bisogno di ciò che non si ha. Dimenticare questi confini significherebbe sprofondare nella hybris, che allontanerebbe l’uomo da ciò che è”.
12“The emotive function of fictional storytelling may often be a matter of repairing […] an emotional state”.
13Es relevante recordar que el director, después de permanecer secuestrado por quince días en el Estadio Nacional en 1973, se exilió a Europa, donde reside actualmente..
14“To invoke the tree of life is to thereby invoke the fall—suffering and death. […] It hearkens to paradise, but it is a paradise that is always already lost”.
15“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?... When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”.
16“Lord… Where were you?… Why?… Did you know?... Who are we to you?... Answer me!”.
17“These experiences of unexpected enlightenment to the personal nature of reality and to the transcendent that may be experienced here and now are particularly important for Malick’s filmic narration. […] Most often this happens in retrospective realization that he [God] was already there all the time, but only now are we struck by the ethical challenge of this meeting”.
18“How did she bear it?”.
19“Hope”.
20“Wonder”.
21“Framing in the essay film often becomes the visible evidence of a process of thinking; it becomes performative, it performs the act of essayistic reflection”.
22“The shape of objects as outlined inside an image”.
23“I gave him to you. I gave you my son”.
24Por lo menos hasta la victoria, en las elecciones presidenciales de diciembre de 2021, del candidato centro-izquierdista Gabriel Boric, quien, en su programa, ha prometido retomar con fuerza los procesos de justicia y verdad relativos tanto al presente como al pasado.
Received: March 24, 2022; Accepted: June 09, 2022
Este es un artículo publicado en acceso abierto bajo una licencia Creative Commons
