THE ETERNAL MEMORY (HotDocs2023) – Review by Liz Braun

The Eternal Memory is a love story about journalist Augusto Gongoro and actress (and arts and culture minister) Paulina Urrutia, a Chilean couple living with his Alzheimer’s.

The movie opens with Augusto sweetly introducing himself to his wife Pauli, whom he doesn’t recognize on that day. She reminds him that he has two adult children and two siblings, that he was a news reporter, and that they’ve known each other more than 20 years — because they’re married.

Pauli then helps her husband shower and shave, and her sweetness with him is touching. She is patient and loving at all times — reading to him, taking him to work with her in the theatre, calming him down when he gets agitated.

It is remarkable to then see archival footage from decades ago that shows her devotion to him has never varied. The Eternal Memory is a heartrending love story told in the usual intimate observational style of award-winning documentary filmmaker Maite Alberdi.

And, as Alberdi’s films tend to do, the small portrait nods to a much bigger story. The film concerns history, memory and identity; the personal and the political are closely woven together here, as Augusto was a reporter in the aftermath of Pinochet’s dictatorship and archival footage brings that dark chapter to life again in the movie.

Even as he struggles in the film to remember who his wife is or whose house they live in, Augusto has not forgotten experiencing some of the worst times of the dictatorship — even as that period in Chile, long suppressed in the public consciousness, begins to fade with time. (This September marks the 50th anniversary of Pinochet seizing power in Chile.)

He and Pauli talk about the worst of the dictatorship and the film includes archival news footage from the period, but the “memory of the country,” he says, is of the independence won after 1990.

Alzheimer’s is robbing Augusto of his memory, and in that, it’s erasing his identity, too, and it is absolutely heartbreaking to witness. Eternal Memory seems to suggest that it is likewise terrible to see how the worst of the Pinochet years are nearly gone from the national memory.

On his worst days, Augusto’s confusion and anguish lead him to believe he can’t go home, that he’s being held against his will, that his friends and children have vanished. Ironically, what he imagines are things that actually did happen to thousands of people during the dictatorship.

It’s a double irony considering he devoted much of his career (in news and as an author) to notions of memory and Chilean cultural life.

The Eternal Memory moves back and forth in time, with archival news footage and home movies showing Chile in the past, as well as Augusto and Pauli at the beginning of their relationship. Political ramifications aside, this is a stunning picture of a relationship and mutual devoted love.

Sadly, the scenes of Pauli including Augusto in her theatre work are quickly replaced with images from the Covid pandemic, and the lockdowns and isolation that resulted. (Some of the footage from lockdown was shot by Pauli.)

Filmmaker Alberdi wanted to capture this couple because of the way Pauli integrated Augusto’s care into everyday life — an effort that allowed Augusto to thrive despite Alzheimer’s.

Tragically, all that was thwarted by pandemic restrictions and exactly the kind of social isolation that exacerbates Alzheimer’s and so many other conditions. The toll taken on both Pauli and Augusto is obvious by the end of the film.

To see the care Pauli lavishes on Augusto suggests the film is in some way an homage to the indomitable women of Chile. The filmmaker says the movie has a message about including dependent people in daily life, even if that isn’t the usual way such things are handled.

Pauli herself has said that the only way we can evolve as a society is for everyone to care for another person at some point in their lives.

Of course — but isn’t that what women do?