The Eternal Memory: Memory Fades While Love Remains in Absorbing Documentary

By Thom Ernst

Rating: A

There won’t be many films—and currently, I can think of none—that are as intensely significant as director Maite Alberdi’s The Eternal Memory.

This is a diary of Augusto Gongóra, one of Chile’s most recognizable commentators on social and cultural reform. An author, historian, archivist, and public figure, Gongóra is comfortable in a world of academia but is now left to battle the debilitating effects caused by Alzheimer’s disease. By his side, through flashes of clarity and agonizing bouts of confusion, is his wife, Chilean actress, Paulina Urrutia.

The Eternal Memory is the final chapter in Gongóra and Urrutia's 25 year–long love story. But the title suggests a transition rather than an absolute end, with the word “eternal” pushing “memory” onto an ethereal plain. Beyond the distressing moments of turmoil and uncertainty there remains an instinctual understanding of the couple's deep connection. It's not always visible, but one suspects — perhaps hopes — that it's still there.

Alberdi captures Gongóra and Urrutia in moments both tender and heartbreaking. Their new reality in the face of Gongóra’s disease leaves them lost in a dark cloud of unforgiving loneliness. Gongóra is alone, trapped in fear and confusion. So, too, is Urrutia in her struggle to cope and understand what is becoming of the man she still loves and recognizes.

The director’s place in history as the first Chilean woman to be nominated for an Oscar (her film The Mole Agent received a best documentary nomination in 2020) is unquestionably defining but I do not imagine it to be any more substantial than the trademark intimacy she develops with her subjects, a skill she gloriously utilizes in The Eternal Memory.

It's possible that by praising the film as “significant” can limit its appeal — the word “intensely” seems even more potentially damaging. Both words foreshadowing a weary excursion into something understood as being “good for you.” But in describing The Eternal Memory, these are, at worse, the wrong words used correctly.

Alberdi establishes a compassion that is evident even when in the grip of the film’s most intimate revelations. And yet, her cameras rarely resonate as imposing or intrusive, existing as though organic to their surroundings.

Alberdi positions The Eternal Memory so that it is a film that can be felt, altering the mere act of passive viewing into an emotionally charged interaction. Still, despite the film's resonating scope of a life lived and altered, it is a film—being independent, foreign, and a documentary—that threatens to skirt past our periphery encased within the parameters of being something to watch when in the mood.

But that's a category packed with unwatched movies. Moods are fickle and can be easily circumvented in favour of something perceived as less challenging. Sure, The Eternal Memory is tough and occasionally relentless, but it is also affirming in ways unexpected. Significant and intense indeed, but the excursion is far from weary.

As to whether the film is good for you is hardly Alberdi’s concern. And it needn’t be ours either. The single expectation, which Alberdi achieves with a grateful and unflinching admiration for her subjects, is to give the audience room to care.

This film is part of The Impact Series.

The Eternal Memory. Directed by Maite Alberdi. With Augusto Gongora and Paulina Urrutia. In selected theatres August 18 including Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox, Montreal’s Cinema Cineplex Forum, Edmonton’s City Centre Cinemas, and Vancouver’s Fifth Avenue Cinemas. Additional cities to open on August 25.