After the eloquent blood-red titles of The colonists, in Chilean Tierra del Fuego at the beginning of the 20th century, the English soldier Alexander MacLennan immediately executes a wounded worker who had lost a hand, as if he were a horse with a broken leg. The Briton immediately meets his employer, the Spanish landowner José Menéndez, who assures him of this “One less man is not a problem. The problem is the Indians.”.
“You will have to clean this island,” the chief orders the soldier with clear euphemism to annihilate the Ona people under the argumentative excuse of opening a safe route to the Atlantic for the passage of their sheep.
The trans-Andean filmmaker Philip Galvez He alternates real and imaginary characters, making his directorial debut after fifteen years as an editor, in this award-winning Patagonian western about the Selknam genocide as the foundation of Chilean civilization, as if it were a South American response to Martin Scorsese’s recent Los assassins de la luna .
An American mercenary and a Baquean mestizo join the British mission to embody two different types of heroes, but also as symbols of the visions of imperialism and the Chilean people.
As soon as they crossed the Argentine border, the three protagonists of a curious encounter with the troops of the expert Francisco Morenostarring Mariano Llinás, which serves as a metaphor for the eternal border conflict put into images with a shooting competition, an arm wrestling match and, finally, pineapple.
“Men fighting for a land where there is nothing”it is said in passing before Moreno criticizes the State and the landowners for the barbarism of having given priority to the construction of a fence to make room for the sheep rather than the education of the indigenous peoples.
The expedition immediately turns into an aboriginal massacre, always seen from the imperturbable and guilty gaze of the half-breed Segundo, until reaching the land claimed by a group of deserting soldiers.
“The Settlers”, by Felipe Gálvez, is set in southern Chile. Photo: MUBI/MACOToo much symbolic load
The big problem with this colorful film lies in the symbolic load that Gálvez assigns to his images, without worrying too much about giving up some of the attractive adventure inherent in wandering through inhospitable territory.
The tensions between natives and colonizers, the oblivion of history, the complicities and betrayals and the role of the government and the Catholic Church are too many, added to the subtexts already announced, to put everything in the mouths of the laconic characters of a Westerner.
Maybe that’s why The colonists It begins as a classic Western, quickly modernizes to become revisionist, and ends with a rousing third act.centered on the dark interiors of a villa where an official, a priest and a landowner discuss, in the midst of negotiations, the foundations of society.
The landlord’s daughter admits, without blushing, that “we have killed many savages and will continue to do so if necessary.”
“The Settlers” shows the interaction, sometimes very cruel, between landowners and the indigenous people of southern Chile, the Ona people. Photo MUBI/MACOThe colonists – the film that Chile sent to the selection for the Oscars, despite not being among the candidates for best foreign film – questions the price of civilization and criticizes the role, active and passive, of each actor in the extermination of the Onas starting from the from the first to the last shot, dedicated to making explicit the image of the attempted subjugation of the native peoples.
File
The colonists
Qualification: Very good
Western/drama. Chile / Argentina / France / Denmark / United Kingdom / Sweden / Taiwan / 2023, 97′. SAM 16. Address: Felipe Galvez. With: Camilo Arancibia, Mark Stanley, Benjamin Westfall, Alfredo Castro, Marcelo Alonso, Mariano Llinás and Luis Machin Rooms: Cacodelphia Art Cinema, Atlas Flores.
Source: Clarin
