"Mi país imaginario" or "My Imagined Country" is a co-production between France and Chile and the latter country is also pretty dominant in this pretty short documentary that is closer to the 80-minute mark than to the 1.5-hour mark. The director and writer here is Patricio Guzmán, a filmmaker from Chile who is over 80 now and has worked on films since the 1960s already. But despite this long time and fairly prolific career, you will probably not really find too many films in his body of work that you have heard of already. He did score a solid amount of awards recognition, but all this also comes only from smaller bodies the way it looks to me. Honestly, as you can see form my rating, I would have been totally fine with this documentary here never getting made. I felt it was almost more of a comedy with how absurd it all was what the interviewees in here are saying and that they do not realize one bit that it may apply to them at least as much as it applies to the ones they are criticizing I mean just you can simply say that this documentary is fully biased, only shows one side of the story and never includes a single police officer, member of the Chilean military forces or member of the government. It does not need to be the president himself. In any case, you can always say that maybe they asked these people to say a few words during this film and they simply declined or did not respond, but it does not matter.
Then the film still could have been more objective with a more talented filmmaker in charge, but the truth is it is all black-and-white only: The good guys on the left of the political spectrum, the bad guys on the right side. Needless to say that the ones on the right are also always the extreme right and the ones on the left are harmless and peaceful coming out there to demonstrate with the drums they bring to make music in the process. Oh boy. This is not what things are really like, not in Chile and not anywhere else. Just look at some of the scenes in this film and how aggressively violent the demonstrations are with the stuff they throw at the police officers. But the mayhem caused by the (extreme) left is ignored all the time and not really included in the media either. At least not television. With newspapers and magazines, things are slowly getting better luckily. Here it is especially absurd though. They show us what these demonstrators are doing and at the same time they fully pretend that only one side is evil. I am not even defending the police or anything. Those did despicable acts too, but it is not just them. There was this pretty interesting analogy about fire that one female interviewee came up with. What did she say? The fire from the left is one that includes hope and the vision for a better future in the smoke that goes up in the air. Okay, I am probably exaggerating a bit here now, but you get the message and what I saying with it. On one side, it is all about hope, on the other it is about destruction and burning hope. As absurd as it gets. I am also pretty sure that everything we hear from the interviewees here was written before. Maybe by them, maybe by Guzmán, but it is not important. The agenda and message are always the same.
There is this speech also by the woman who rambles on about everything she supports and literally if this one is not a radical member of the left-wing, then I am the Emperor of China. But she would have fit in nicely with the Democrat party in North America. I will not say anything else about her because the sooner I forget her, the better. Needless to say, she was also wearing a mask because of the pandemic despite speaking into a microphone. Unreal. Was there anything good at all about this? Maybe the chess player who was quite stunning, but sadly what she had to say was also biased and fueling more hatred from one political spectrum. I also have no clue why she was in it. Maybe it was really just because of her looks. It was not told that she played any role in the uprisings at all or so. All she did was make a connection when being asked if chess can be seen as a game that has a parallel with the situation in Chile. This was so bizarre. All of it. This is not good documentary filmmaking. Rather the opposite in fact. But you understood that by now I hope. Admittedly the video recordings from up in the air of this gigantic number of demonstrators was quite impressive. How packed the streets were. Not gonna lie, this is where the filmmaker maybe should have rather put his focus on instead of including all kinds of hatred from beginning to end. The perhaps most embarrassing moment was probably when we had this quartet of women there and what they did. Like literally, this felt like a comedy movie at that point. If it had been meant as a satire, I would say please nominate this film for a Golden Globe in the comedy/musical category, but they were 100% serious with this dance performance and what they had to say.
This was also linked by the way to a truly despicable and disrespectful statement here from this documentary, namely when these oh so brave role model women talk about how the political establishment is dominated by rather old White (I may capitalize or is it a privilege for another race?) men, which until this point may be not wrong (I admit truth when I see it, that's what makes you unbiased, not to an 80-year-old documentary filmmaker who still hasn't understood), but when they ramble on about these old White men raping them, it becomes as absurd as it gets. This is a statement that should be treated lightly and the ones who say so should be taken to court for false accusations. The system owes this to the men who are falsely confronted with a serious accusation like this and it also owes this to the women who are indeed victims of rape or survivors (even if I don't like the term in this context) or whatever you want to call them. No woman who actually got raped and had to go through this devastating heartbreaking act would use said term related to politicians who just maybe refused positive discrimination to them. Or even if they do not do enough for women in Chile, which is absolutely okay to criticize, then you should still stay with the facts and not get carried away like these people do. It's just disgusting and this statement was even used twice there. As if they were proud of this comparison. I think it's a travesty and I feel sad for all the woman who have to live with an event like this in their past and this film literally mocks them. There is also no debating this. It is the facts what was said here in this film. But I cannot really be surprised. Why? Because Guzmán has already film-wise elaborated on Pinochet over 20 years ago, so it was obvious that here we would also get the full program in terms of one out of Allende and Pinochet being totally bad and evil and the other being a saint. Yeah right.
The end of the film is also kinda expected. Early on, we had one interviewee ramble on about how horrible it would be if the candidate from the right wins the election and I think on one occasion they even call it automatically non-democratic if it is not their candidate who is in charge as if there wasn't even an election or so... ridiculous. But yeah, what I wanted to say here is then that Chile finally also gets its Obama, Trudeau, Macron equivalent finally and we hear extracts from a speech from the man, a speech he gave briefly after the election. Guess what, I do not support the winner, but I accept him and would never say this was not a democratic decision. Certain people can learn a lot from this approach of mine. So yeah, political speech at the end of the film what makes it this? Little hint: Ten letters, starts with a "p" and ends with an "a". You know what I mean for sure. I wonder how many theaters would have agreed to show this film if it had been told from the other side of the spectrum. Or not even that, unbiased in the middle would have been good enough. Maybe 5% of the ones that showed this biased mess. Also where are the male interviewees? I smell a serious case of gender discrimination here. Misandry galore. What I found even more worrying than all this, however, was people in the room actually applauding the outcome when the closing credits rolled in, some sang the song that was playing there, probably something patriotic linked to Chile or communism. Sad to see this kind of propaganda work so well in the simple-minded and they are probably the majority. What a mess! I could only shake my head and get out of the room as fast as possible. I am sure it was those people who would take people to court who dare sing a patriotic German song in whatever context. Okay, this is enough. I highly recommend you to stay far, far away from this film. Sad to see a filmmaker at this age has understood nothing about his craft. Don't see it on the small or especially not the big screen. I am glad I have a movie theater subscription and paid no specific sum of money to see this one. Perhaps the worst film of the year, a definite contender without a doubt.
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