'Infinite memory': the beautiful song to love of a moving documentary about Alzheimer's

Maite Alberdi does not compose one film after another. She makes several films at the same time. A no small detail in her cinema, shared with other documentary filmmakers, that enhances the Chilean director's ability to delve into difficult topics with the final feeling of having had everything controlled down to the last detail, when in reality they are works in continuous process. of construction and perhaps self-destruction. Compared to the thesis documentary, the search documentary.

Creator of The mole agent (2020), singular and almost unique documentary, story of the daily life of a nursing home guided by one of its own, converted into a spy at the age of 83, Alberdi met the couple formed by Augusto Góngora and Paulina Urrutia when he had already been diagnosed with premature Alzheimer's at the age of 62, in 2014. Two human beings for whom the world fell upon them, but who fought daily to continue sharing their love. And two beings who, in addition, had professional peculiarities so related to culture and, here is the key, to memory, that trying to tell a story with them, or through them (which story remained to be seen), seemed palpitating. . Góngora, relevant journalist, documentary filmmaker and presenter, in charge of the culture area of ​​Chilean public television for several years, and combative chronicler of the country's reality during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. And Urrutia, prestigious actress, and Minister of Culture during the first government of Michelle Bachelet, between 2006 and 2010.

The infinite memory It is the result of a work that is initially uncertain, but which ends up being three beautiful and heartbreaking things: a film about love, about its survival despite everything, in health and in illness; a testimony about Alzheimer's, about its relentless stages, its fearsome steps from the first forgetfulness to despair and dementia; and a study on collective memory, as well as individual memory, about Chile as a country and the need to know and remember who dominated it for too long and what the consequences were.

For five years, with the initial permission of Urrutia himself, then with some forgetfulness and gaps, but with his mind still awake most of the time, a camera recorded from a corner of the couple's room everything that happened and was talked about there. And it is precisely with one of those moments that Alberdi begins his overwhelming documentary, with a prologue that shows the inexorable advance of oblivion while love, affection and sweetness remain intact. A captivating beginning accompanied, in the first half of the story, by some home videos from 1999; walks and readings; some documentary extracts about the work of both before the illness, particularly the Pinochet repression; delicacy, piety and enthusiasm, despite everything. It's the “Oh, look, a chest!” part, paraphrasing the fish memory of the lovely Dori from Finding Nemo, the journey of eternal rediscovery. A love letter with some shocking statement: “I don't want to die. “I'm going to fight until the end.”

However, as it could not be otherwise, after 45 minutes darkness takes over the film. The disagreement, the nerves, the pleas for help, the mental delirium. Even bad manners. The disease is like that. The horror. The pain. The solar eclipse that the couple sees in a sequence in the first half, as a metaphor for the progressive darkening, is completing, and here you have to be very strong to endure shocking scenes and words. Moments that, despite the agreement to make his Alzheimer's disease visible with Góngora – who died in May 2023, three months after the premiere at the Berlin festival – may lead certain viewers to think that they are walking too thin a wire around the I respect. And some doubts that perhaps could have been avoided by cutting off a couple of cries and delusions just three seconds before.

_