Presented at Cannes in the section A certain look, the first feature film of Felipe Gálvez abscess of genocide of ethnic groups Selk Today totally decimated. Mass crime perpetrated at the beginning of the last century and often overshadowed by the colonialism of Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century, the massacre of indigenous people committed by settlers and Chileans on their own lands remains a taboo of national history. It is through an anti-Western that the director flosses with one of the darkest parts of the history of the Land of Fire. A burning subject whose introduction in media res has been able to steal the uninitiated from Chilean history.
An anti-western without concessions
Los Colonos is structured around two distinct parts. The first presents a triangle of characters that everything contrasts diametrically. There was first Scotsman MacLennan, who was nicknamed the Red Pig; he who loved to collect Native Americans' ears and whose legend claims he poisoned a stranded whale on the beach to kill hundreds of natives. In Patagonia, MacLennan is a myth and there are even streets and rivers in his name. Supported by Bill, a Texas cowboy, the two men treated Segundo with contempt, an Amerindian mestizo who they would make accomplices in their crimes. Resolutely believed in his approach, Los Colonos is merciless from beginning to end.
These three riders are thus engaged by a rich landowner, José Menéndez (1846-1918), who historically was one of the main artisans of the capture of the Land of Fire by this rich family from the principality of Asturias. He opened the second part of this feature film, years after the massacres committed by the settlers, while Chilean judge Waldo Seguel conducted the investigation.
Los Colonos is a raw work that deprives itself of preliminary explanations, even if let us gradually discover the objective of this expedition towards the Atlantic as horizon. However, there are a few contextual elements that allow us to better understand the stakes of the film. Apart from Magellan's passage in 1520, local people's contacts with Selksam were said to have been particularly limited for more than 400 years according to historians. Until the end of the 19th century, Chile and Argentina, which had so far shown that little interest in southern lands mobilized Europeans like MacLennan to colonize these southern lands.
Men without faith or law, people sadly ordinary, rustre and no heroes, unlike the imagination forged by the golden age of the American western, explains the director. This is the figure of the other, embodied by the Amerindian.
« Explorers, breeders, and soldiers had no scruples to unload their Mauser against the unfortunate Indians, as if they were fierce beasts or game. »
The Chilean official history - which is always known to be written by the winners - has thus forged from every coin the myth of the Menéndez family to which the economic development of the region was unjustly attributed. It was only in 2014 that a Spanish historian, José Luis Alonso Marchante, scrupulously detricated the country's history after six years of investigation. In his book, Lead King of Patagonia, the author raises the taboo of genocide by working on the shadow parts of the book Thirty years in Fireland, currently held at the Spanish library.
Written by the Salesian Italian missionary and ethnologist Alberto de Agostini (1883-1960), this book is still a founding element of the country's painful historiography, thanks to Marchante's revelation of the censored passages. These withdrawals -voluntarily removed from the world - have led to the direct incrimination of José Menéndez in person.
A first film about the Chilean genocide
So far, it is the first and only cinematographic representation of this genocide that was presented in Cannes. Felipe Gálvez is thus in line with Marchante by contributing to the denunciation of Chilean official history. The latter was « artificially built by these large families with the complicity not only of historians but also of the Salesian church » Explains the director.
By adopting a silver-grained photograph and a ratio of 1.66:1 today pinned, Felipe Gálvez seems to question our current view of the past. The distinction between real archive videos and a particularly black narrative with a perfectly anecdotal fictivity. The Spanish author explains his approach:
« Los Colonos does not seek to reconstruct a historical truth, but rather to reflect on how fiction, especially cinema, has the power to modify and distort history, to rewrite it. »
At the heart of these remote lands, life has no value as suggested by the initial scene where a worker is executed in cold blood, even though he has just lost his arm, torn away in a fraction of a second during the construction of an obviously too tense fence. « Here, a manchot is worth nothing » Let go of the pistolero before he shoots it with no shame. Once the expedition is launched to the Atlantic, the scenes of violence will multiply under the eye full of anger and guilt of Segundo, powerless.
The property is the theft
MacLennan and Bill will systematically eliminate all Amerindians on their way, they are said to be meaningless. In watermark, it is understood that their mission is to exterminate natives to prevent them from hunting sheep. These animals, it is true, contributed to the growth of the milling trade of the Menéndez Empire.
Indeed the exploitation of this woolly cattle, introduced by the colonists, would have profoundly destabilized the ecosystem. The Guanacos, once the main source of food for the tribes, reportedly took refuge on the heights and a large part of them were reportedly eradicated by the Europeans. Thus the Amerindians had no choice but to attack the beasts to survive and that's why Menéndez commissioned men like the Red Pig to assassinate these natives. « too rebel to be civilized ». By the beginning of the 20th century, the use of head hunters was commonplace and these kinds of bounty hunters would have even been paid one pound sterling per pair of Indian ears brought back.
If Los Colonos It is also thanks to his unexpected epilogue. Felipe Gálvez wanted to balance his story with another historical character: Judge Waldo Seguel, whom we mentioned earlier. Historically, the lawman went to Menéndez to conduct the first investigation into the massacre of the Selk!nam ethnic group. Was this intention (at first glance laudable) the morning of political ambition? This is the question that the director poses directly by denouncing another form of violence: the assimilation of indigenous cultures into European culture.
Indeed the « Indigenous law » They were forbidden to speak their own language, to keep their culture and even less to try to pass it on to their children. They could only go to school and were considered second-class citizens, although a number were collected by the Salesians as demonstrated by the writings of Alberto de Agostini.
« To know intimately the attraction of this nomadic and primitive life, one must be locked in the solitude of these valleys, to have explored these mysterious forests where, hidden from the secular view of civilized, what remains of this race only requires not to be bothered in their slow agony. »
In a concluding scene where the outbreak of violence reminds the spectator to the present, Judge Waldo Seguel, character with apparent courtesy ends up discovering: « You want to be part of the nation, yes or no Rosa? » Silence while the camera continues to film Segundo's companion... « Drink this tea!", he screams, out of him while he was trying to make witness face camera by taking back the codes of the old continent.
By voluntarily choosing not to make heroes emerge in his story, Felipe Gálvez signs a historical film without concessions or ounce of hope. An artistic proposal that presents the merit of radicality by returning to the origins of a millennium problem. Finally « five families, all bound by common economic or family interests, had absolutely all the lands of Chilean Patagonia » explains Marchante during a Interview with the newspaper L. Even today « Chile's constitution does not recognize indigenous people as part of the nation, unlike Canada. » He denounced Felipe Gálvez. At a time when these lines are written, genocide has never been officially recognized by Chile. No doubt the film will be warmly welcomed by the Chilean authorities...
As she digs the tropes of the western to explore Chile's colonial past, lift the veil of the Selk!nam genocide and recall the bloody birth of the nation, this uncompromising and committed wild fresco is the culprits without trembling. Nevertheless, even if it makes the best use of its claustrophobic exteriors and the unexpected eruption of violence, it is at the step that this ride towards the limits of the world (more and more dark) is advancing!
[...] KillerS7ven's criticism [...]
I hadn't heard of this Los Colonos at all, and God knows if your article makes me want (even if he doesn't have any date to go to Switzerland unfortunately...).
Ah, Swiss tragedy... yes, I haven't seen a lot going around about him. It's a radical film in his approach, I can understand that he can steal. But it has a real angle chosen by the real!
[...] years almost to the day after Augusto Pinochet's coup d'état in Chile, the whole world remembers this major event of the 20th century. The cinema is obviously [...]
Well, that's it, I was finally able to catch him thanks to his recent release on MUBI! A great film, certainly, that would have been high in my favourite feature films from last year. Thanks for your review!