Altiplano
directed by Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth
Altiplano follows the stories of Grace, an award-winning Belgian photojournalist, and Saturnina,
who lives in a small village high in the Peruvian Andes and is engaged to handsome Ignacio. Above SaturninaÕs village is
an old silver mine. Something in her village is wrong ÐÐ very wrong. SaturninaÕs mother complains of headaches and blurred
vision while preparing her daughterÕs wedding gown. A visit to the eye doctors ÐÐ one of them GraceÕs husband Max ÐÐ reveals
nerve damage. The mine uses mercury to extract silver from the ore.
Invented in the 16th century by Spanish merchant BatholomŽ de Medina,
the ÒpatioÓ process has been used to compensate for the declining quality of silver ores and increasing labor costs in the Spanish
Americas. One of MaxÕs colleagues has witnessed another mercury contamination: When the mercury evaporated, there was no story,
no responsibility. When the village churchÕs plaster Virgin smashes, children play with liquid silver on the ground.
Instead of making a film of indictment, writers/directors Peter Brosens and Jessica Hope Woodworth use the social drama as
a starting point for what you might call a spiritual journey for Grace (Bandits frontwoman Jasmin Tabatabai), for she is suffering from
a crisis of conscience in her work: The image she took of her Iraqui guide being shot had won her a prize. Ignacio, sick with
mercury poisoning, scales the heights to collect glacier water for the wedding ceremony; when his body is brought back,
the villagersÕ anger erupts against the impotent European doctors and Max is struck by a thrown rock.
Brosens and Woodworth use the breathtaking natural scenery of Peru as the stage for their symbolist theater, populated with
masked Sun, Moon and Spirit figures that form a colonnade of trumpeters. Garments of the dead are burnt to bitter ashes; the
river carries the sorrow. Familiar symbols unite the two distant planes: GraceÕs shot of her Iraqui guide at the moment of his
death resembles the crucified Christ; the masked Spirits lay the body of Saturnina (Magaly Solier) under the long shadow of a
stone cross.
Long shots from moving cameras compose the landscape, revealing each element
like successive lines in a poem. Unexpectedly, it is the Belgian segment, away from the bleaching sun of the high altitude, that takes
on the look of magical realism; the sets are abstract, time is contiguous. A ruined cathedral is a picnic ground, then a cemetery.
When the camera pans past a pillar, the mourners have disappeared, and it is Grace contemplating a journey to the high plains,
where Max had breathed his last. This Europe under an overcast sky is for Grace unreality itself, floating between there and now.
The losses of their loves bring together the two women, although Grace and Saturnina never meet, except in spirit. It is SaturninaÕs suicide
note, recorded on MaxÕs video camera, that tells Grace, ÒWithout an image there is no story.Ó Does she then recognize her work as
her destiny ÐÐ to record and tell, of the cries of the dying and of lives thus lived? We expect Tabatabai (whose physical toughness
makes her convincing as a war photographer) to pull out the camera hidden at the bottom of her luggage, to start shooting ÐÐ but
the filmmakers spare us such an easy resolution. Altiplano restrains itself from moralizing and chooses instead to hover
somewhere
between dreams and reality.
