Other titles on the marquee are The Seventh Dwarf, Fast and Furious, Mall Cop, Cinderella, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Cobbler. Nearly squeezed off the edge of the electronic display of current attractions, we manage to find the documentary’s paltry three daily showings. We pay for our tickets, buy a couple of cortados, and go into the theater to see the 1:00 p.m. show, while the rest of the world is eating or making lunch.
An army of red seats constitutes the lonely, unsettling landscape inside the theater. A distinct smell suffuses the space, of Forest Pine or some other air freshener. Left behind are the bright lobby posters, ads for ice cream, deals on drinks and popcorn, video games, pizza menus, ATMs, sound tracks of trailers for coming attractions. As if we were crossing over to the dark side of the moon, the smallest theater in the multiplex awaits us, completely empty and utterly silent. Our steps slow to the pace of a different time inside. It’s a dense, plodding time, far from the rain of stimuli that we’ve just weathered on the other side of the door. We advance through the gloom, looking for seats. The screen is still dark, so all we hear are our voices trying not to disturb the hush. We settle down in the middle of the theater and wait for the show to start with the strange feeling that we’re being watched. Probably by the operator in the projection room. Or maybe by someone on the other side of that enormous blank screen.
I remember a certain episode of The Twilight Zone. In it an older actress retreats alone to the living room of her mansion to watch, over and over, the movies she acted in when she was younger. She is trying desperately to stop time, and nothing and no one can pry her from her seclusion as she drinks whiskey and watches her own past projected on the screen in the darkness. Outside is the effervescent city of Los Angeles, her old friends, her assistant, her loyal agent trying to find her new job prospects. Scene of a woman watching a screen. Leading lady from long ago, bright star of a vanished constellation, left behind as the earth turns and time passes, intones the announcer as the episode begins. Barbara Jean Trenton, her world a room where dreams are spun of celluloid, struck down by the years and left lying on the sad street, grasping for the license number of fugitive fame.
More than the announcer’s intense introduction to the story, it’s the memory of Barbara drinking whiskey as she sits before the continuous projection of her past that creeps into my mind in the middle of this empty place. Except for my mother next to me in this theater that is at once tiny and vast, I’m as alone as Barbara. And like her I’m here to watch yet again the same old images that have hounded me for years.
After a few previews the documentary begins. The clatter of a typewriter comes over the theater’s speakers. A giant blank sheet of paper appears onscreen and keys type the title of the movie across it. Next comes the bombing of La Moneda yet again, the military proclamations yet again, the National Stadium and the detainees yet again.
Unlike Barbara Jean Trenton, I’m not the protagonist of what I see. I wasn’t there, I have no dialogue or part in the plot. The scenes projected in this theater aren’t mine, but they’ve always been close, at my heels. Maybe that’s why I think of them as part of my story. I was born with them planted inside me, images in a family album that I didn’t choose or arrange. What little I remember from that time are these scenes. In the rapid succession of events that I inhabit, in the whirlwind of images that I consume and discard daily, they stand untouched by time and forgetting. As if governed by a different gravitational force, they neither float away nor spin off into space at random. They’re always there, unshakeable. They come back to me or I come back to them, in a dense, circular time, the kind I’m breathing in this empty theater.
I’ve spent much of my life scrutinizing these images. I’ve followed their scent, tracked them, collected them. I’ve inquired about them, requested explanations. I’ve peered into their corners, their darkest crannies. I’ve blown them up and sorted them, trying to find a place and a meaning for them. I’ve turned them into quotes, proverbs, maxims, jokes. I’ve written books about them, articles, plays, TV scripts, documentaries, and even soap operas. I’ve seen them projected on countless screens, printed in books, newspapers, magazines. I’ve researched them to the point of boredom, imagining or even inventing what I can’t understand. I’ve photocopied them, stolen them, consumed them, displayed and overdisplayed them, exploiting them in every possible way. I’ve ransacked every page of the album they inhabit, searching for clues that might help me decipher their message. Because I’m sure they, like a black box, hold a message.
In the documentary, one of the subjects talks about the discovery of a mass grave in 1978. A peasant came to the offices of the Vicariate to deliver a valuable piece of information. In an abandoned limestone mine near Santiago, in the district of Isla de Maipo, he said that he had seen a group of hidden bodies. Immediately a commission of lawyers, priests, and reporters set out discreetly to verify the man’s claims. When they arrived they made their way into the dark vault of the mine, lighting their way with a torch. As they were combing through the rubble, a human rib cage fell on one of them, confirming the information they had been given. Then they looked up and discovered that the chimneys of
