It is deeply intelligent, intensely and painfully political, and yet attempts, and succeeds, somehow to transcend politics and perhaps even history itself.
The film's passionate insistence on remembrance lends it a moral as well as a metaphysical weight. Mr. Guzmán's belief in eternal memory is an astounding leap of faith.
A film of rare visual poetry that's simultaneously personal, political and philosophical, it's a genuine art film that's also unpretentious and easygoing.
88
Boston GlobeMark Feeney
Boston GlobeMark Feeney
What starts out as a beautifully depopulated filmic exercise - it's 14 minutes into the movie before Guzman introduces any people - becomes toward the end a nearly unbearable examination of good and bad in the human heart.
A moving meditation on history, knowledge and mortality.
80
EmpireDavid Parkinson
EmpireDavid Parkinson
A truly insightful art film that still manages to be easy-going and unpretentious.
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Stephen Cole
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Stephen Cole
Patricio Guzmán's documentary, Nostalgia for the Light, pays equal attention to the astronomers and searchers, regarding their quest as the same – a search for life.