Cordellieria Of Dreams

Cordillera of dreams

 A meditative doc that is part social commentary and part national treasure , but for all the peaks and troughs of the Andes is pretty flat.

I know nothing of the Andes , I don’t know anything about Chile. I went to the screening with no information. I came out filled with vistas , arts and commentary. Yet while informed and educated, I was left rather unenthused throughout the film. I was l, and to say why.

Opening the cordilleras, the film makes it quite clear it’s a form of memoir. We see the Andes and to directors’ regrets or rather melan Ch okia which set the tone like cave paintings that Wim Wenders so much. We meet a variety of vox pops to a degree of how the Andes inspire and inform the lives of artists, geologists, and writers. The image of it as some spiritual symbol and protector and calm. This juxtaposition pf to serenity of scenery as there is a deep dive of chap, protests,s and politics within the city itself. 

This is embodied in many ways with Pablo at the forefront. Positioned in many ways as the road less travelled to our directorial voice. Pablo stayed during the dictatorship and was constantly on the ground. There is an initial streak in him that one does wonder about his personal morality …” best protests to film are where something happens, the police took away a man, and it was ruined in the shot by some guy using a cellphone.”

However, as the film intertwines the Andes with the political views, we also have some shocking and visceral footage by Pablo at the time. As someone 46 with minimal knowledge of the turn of events, anecdotal at best. It was striking and passionate how to see a regime of militant police force attacking folks. There is no way around it. Water cannons turned on unarmedlargey cardigan students sitting on the steps, batons at the ready, and riot shields prepared to go.

However, the initial shock is diffused with a rather facile analysis. 

There was a point where it could even be entirely distancing, and I felt like ‘Rob’ in High fidelity .

Except for one woman, the entire input, it is men. Even with that difference, all are of an age, understandable given the historical events, and depicted and framed as cultured, comfortable, currently middle-class people. While the views and analysis of the economic situation post-Pinochet has not changed. And with the UK seeming to fall into the same model of having elevated the poorest to a degree…the actual gap between them and the more affluent continues to rise, making social mobility more than stagnant but effectively regressive.

However, f our interviews talk ‘about the poor’, the more damaged, broken, and tattered remnants of slums are depicted. There is no effort to speak with them…and given the Andes surround everyone, it seems pretty remiss.

The film is relatively brisque, and the sound and music are engaging …on a technical level, the subtitles used to smore muscular work as white words on often white backgrounds, given the film is essentially snow and sky at the point seems a bit rushed.

As we neared the end, we listened to our director talks with nostalgia and a specific space hopper romance of his past and plucky lives and freedoms from the alps and the past. But there needs to be more to conclude where the Chilean people will be as an aspect of personal struggle, ernmental, or societal.

I opened with the fact I knew so little. And what I learned was necessary, and I’m grateful. But I feel the audience who consciously chooses this film, will already have the answers this film may provide, and as such, it serves best as a book club—a starter to a conversation but no main course in itself.

Check, please!