In 2012, Chilean documentary maker Patricio Guzmán released Nostalgia for the Light, a justly acclaimed essay film that yoked together Chile’s traumatic recent history of political killings with a reflection on the country’s nascent passion for astronomy. Now he has created The Pearl Button, which offers a not dissimilar mix of elevated nature worship and gruesome detail of torture and kidnap. Guzmán takes a characteristically sweeping view, as he begins by surveying Chile’s south-west island chain: it was here, in this remote region, that indigenous pre-Columbian peoples established a uniquely marine culture, one that was comprehensively destroyed by the arrival of European settlers. Guzmán also notes the case of Jemmy Button, a Fuegan who was taken to England in 1830, “paid for” with a single button. As suggested by the title, the button is a symbolic object, finding its echo in the traces left of victims of Chile’s military dictatorship, their corpses tied to heavy metal rail-tracks and dropped into the sea. Guzmán’s reputation as one of the great documentarians will only be enhanced by The Pearl Button. It really is intelligent, magnificent film-making.
