47/32
Line of Events
A young girl’s gift for narrating the events of Hollywood movies changes her family’s fate in the Chilean countryside of the 1960s. With Odavde do vječnosti (1953). Screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, this film is both an homage to American Westerns and an exploration of the power of cinema and storytelling to transform lives. In Spanish with subtitles, the characters are drawn from real life, and a pretty tough one at that. Set in “the driest place on earth,” the community is not unhappy. There’s plenty of room for gentle comedy and young love. The camera turns away from the real violence, but not from the story, which frankly addresses what goes on behind the scenes in the town located in a saltpeter desert for the young woman at the center of the story. The film was shot on location in an abandoned mining town, which only adds to the verisimilitude.