The Eternal Memory

After 20 years of a fulfilling relationship, the well-known Chilean journalist and author Augusto Góngora and actor and later Chilean Minister of Culture Paulina Urrutia get married. When Góngora is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2014, his wife begins to record everyday moments and document her husband’s advancing illness on video. A mixture of television archive material, older private video recordings and recently shot scenes creates a tender portrait of a loving relationship in which small gestures and looks express intimacy more powerfully than words. However, moments of alienation and pain are not omitted and this allows us to sense both the tragedy of being trapped and the feeling of hopelessness that Góngora’s slide into oblivion creates for them both.
Using a collage-like montage that makes the film seem like a journey through the stages of an eventful life, Maite Alberdi traces the story of a man who has spent his whole life writing in a bid to prevent collective forgetting, but who is now himself gradually losing his memory.