Nostalgia for the Light attempts to create a connection between the explorations of deep and distant space and investigation into the recent history of the Pinochet dictatorship and the thousands that disappeared. Profound and often tragic stuff, but unfortunately I don’t think it really succeeded at making this connection beyond a superficial level.

Instead of the film helping me to discover and personally feel touched by the enormity of the universe and the enormity of grief and loss we were continuously being told in a very poetic narration. The narrators prose often felt like it was dripping with metaphor some of which were a bit cliched and dare I say overly nostalgic.

The filmmaker obviously had an idea of what he wanted to say, and he was clearly fixated on the astronomy angle, but I think the film would of been stronger if he had actually changed course after discovering the women in the desert. This for me was by far the strongest part of the film. Following the women around the desert and listening to their stories was engrossing and I felt myself suddenly drawn into the story and that world; whereas before I felt like i was on the outside and very conscious of the presence of the filmmaker.

Don’t tell me everything, let me discover for myself. For example, the part about us all being made of stardust and how the calcium in our bones was created just after the big bang was really interesting. It was – I thought – fairly obvious to make the connection between that statement and the bones that the women in the desert were digging for and sometimes finding, but I didn’t need the film to come right out and state it. The visual effect of the particles of star dust overlayed on the image were also overstated.

I might be getting a bit picky, but the images of deep space were beautiful on the big screen but I felt a little put off knowing that many were from the Hubble Space Telescope and not from the telescopes in the Chilean Desert.

A lot of the images were beautiful. It looked like it was filmed on HD video but the alien-looking desert and the great white telescopes looked amazing. I just wish the storytelling was stronger.