"Los colonos" (aka "The Settlers") is an international production with a solid screenplay and measured directing by Felipe Gálvez Haberle. It may not be the best film of 2023, yet it deservedly won several international awards and is a haunting social commentary on colonialism to raise consciousness with an artistic flair. You would be hard pressed to find a more impactful movie in the last few years about indigenous atrocities. Even Martin Scorsese's superior "Killers of the Flower Moon" fails to express so viscerally and intellectually the lingering injustice and the inherent flaws of the system that prevails to this day.
The recent trend to, only when confronted, publicly acknowledge aspects of the world's most horrific genocide and culturicide in recorded history still lacks real solutions, salvation and changes necessary to avoid these types of atrocities in this new century. We are still faced with largely sanitised native history with selected omissions or distortions making there way to the classrooms and overall culture. Many think natives died of disease because of weaker or unprepared immune system and long time ago. This film shows 20th century history way after massacres like the Bloody River in St. Kitts, where roughly 2000 Kalinago natives were massacred by British and French forces in an unlikely alliance in the 17th century. We also now know that tens of thousands of native children were taken from their parents for "reducation" in Canada and hundreds massacred in a system that was active as late as 1996!
"Los colonos" forces us to look at our collective colonial past and present. The editing is poignant and the sudden switch in the narrative to a future with a more benevolent and supposedly peace-seeking politician, after the fact, to salvage the reputation of the government, inquire, blame and benefit is sublime. Doctrines of violence or pacification with docile "allies have always had the same aim: to solve the troublesome "problem of the savages on their ancestral land" that the colonisers claimed and simply took. This film's depiction (and deception) is marked with nuances and relates to current climate of "truth, reconciliation and inclusion" which has to date failed to produce tangible or real results.
Felipe Gálvez Haberle said in an interview that the history of cinema is also stained with blood in terms of what has been shown and how. Here, he examines this systemic colonial mindset that seeps into every aspect of our lives without much afterthought or questioning. He uses a 4:3 aspect ratio that is much less gimmicky than Bradley Cooper's "Maestro" and more aimed at providing a claustrophobic and time-capsule atmosphere, like perhaps the beautiful "The Lighthouse" from Robert Eggers in another genre of movie-making. Haberle and cinematographer Simone D'Arcangelo still manage to capture breathtaking Patagonia scenery along with some intimate interior shots and more graphic gut-wrenching scenes. It is not however overly graphic and let's the dialogue and unsaid or unseen events creep into the viewers mind as the story unfolds and is expertly exposed with a few satisfying and surprising twists.
A must-see for cinephiles, teachers and school children!
(8/10)
