Chilean director Maite Alberdi’s documentary The Eternal Memory has won a cascade of prizes, from Sundance’s International Documentary Grand Jury Award to a Goya Award in Spain; it is now nominated for a 2024 Academy Award in the Best Documentary category.
Alberdi excels at lifting a veil of invisibility to reveal the fragility and also the value of people we don’t often see in their intimacy. Such is the case of The Grown-Ups (2016), focusing on adults with Down syndrome, or the humorous Tea Time (2014), where she captured her grandmother’s friends’ camaraderie, or the outstanding The Mole Agent (2020), in which an elderly amateur detective enters a retirement home to uncover alleged abuses. The Mole Agent was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best International Film.
The Eternal Memory tracks the life of a couple that has been together for over 20 years, Paulina Urrutia and her husband Augusto Góngora. They are both well-known in Chile. She is an actress who was Minister for Culture and the Arts during President Michelle Bachelet’s term in 2006 to 2010. He was a journalist, author, and news reporter who made clandestine videos during Pinochet’s dictatorship, risking repression to record the abuses and poverty inflicted by the military regime.
The filming began after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at the age of 62, and the pair’s warmth and affection make the viewer empathize with them from the start. Alberdi convincingly gains the full trust of the people she portrays, and her access to their lives never seems intrusive or manipulative as she deals with many layers of memories: emotional, personal, and political. In the early stages, her protagonists live their lives to the fullest and are not held back by the disease. Góngora attends Paulina’s theatre performances, sometimes joining her on stage during rehearsals, as her colleagues welcome him with kindness.
There is sometimes a feeling of forced gaiety in Paulina’s laughter, probing Góngora’s memory to help him remember his achievements, his family, and his friends. As a stage and film actress and a public figure, one cannot help but suspect that Paulina is performing for the camera. When she finally breaks down and the usually cheerful Góngora desperately cries out for help, the film hits us with the full force of human suffering.
Other Chilean filmmakers have documented the horrors of the country’s military coup and its enforced historical amnesia to great effect, such as Patricio Guzman’s films Battle of Chile (1979), Chile, Obstinate Memory (1997), and Nostalgia for the Light (2010). Alberdi’s focus, instead, is intimate, but while reclaiming lost personal memories, she achieves a universal resonance in portraying the effects of a disease that is increasingly common as the world’s population ages.
Brisk editing and good use of archival footage and home movies make the film less claustrophobic, especially during the Covid pandemic, when the couple was confined to their home and Paulina was in charge of recording their daily lives. The camera picks up moments of spontaneity which are of symbolic value, such as Góngora smelling his books with affection, watching a crumbling glacier in southern Chile or a solar eclipse, as his mind also gradually darkens. In his final flashes of anxiety, he calls out to his friends and his mother, and fails to recognize his wife.
Music plays an important role in placing us in precise time frames, or simply pulling at our heartstrings: from Silvio Rodriguez’ Cuban ballads or the rhythms of mambo king Perez Prado, to Dominican Juan Luis Guerra’s bachatas, from Italy’s Lucio Dalla to classical scores, the documentary jolts our collective memories to reminisce and feel some nostalgia for the days when street protests inspired a return to democracy in Chile and then extended to the whole region. In the film, Augusto Góngora’s spirits are lifted as he shimmies to those tunes.
Ultimately redeemed by the enduring love between its characters, The Eternal Memory is a salute to two courageous people, who were willing to share the joys of their daily lives, but also the anguish inflicted by a cruel disease. Góngora died shortly after the film was finished, and we can fully appreciate his legacy, as well as his wife’s loving care, in Alberdi’s moving documentary.
Director, screenwriter: Maite Alberdi
Producers: Maite Alberdi, Juan de Dios Larraín, Pablo Larraín, Rocío Jadue
With: Augusto Góngora, Paulina Urrutia
Cinematography: Pablo Valdés
Editing: Carolina Siraqyan
Sound: Juan Carlos Maldonado
Music: Miguel Miranda, Jose Miguel Tobar
Production companies: MTV Documentary Films, Micromundo, Fabula
Chile, 2023
In Spanish
85 minutes
