The Eternal Memory, 2023.
Directed by Maite Alberdi.
SYNOPSIS:
Augusto and Paulina have been together for 25 years. Eight years ago, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Both fear the day he no longer recognises her.
Maite Alberdi follows up her thoroughly charming, Oscar-nominated documentary The Mole Agent with another intimate film about the toils of ageing. If the surfeit of dementia-themed docs flooding our screens in recent years might give one pause, The Eternal Memory’s uniquely intimate, even hopeful approach makes it well worth watching.
Chilean journalist Augusto Gongora and Paulina Urrutia have been together for 25 years and married since 2016. But in 2014, Augusto was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, causing Paulina to become his caretaker, as proves especially challenging when Augosto’s symptoms begin worsening during the onset of the pandemic.
In the opening scene of Alberdi’s film, Paulina is attempting to help Augosto remember who he is; his old job, that they’re married, and basically the life they’ve lived for a quarter-century. It’s a sequence which so acutely captures the emotional devastation of someone being robbed of who they are, an especially tragic outcome for a man whose life’s work involved documenting Chile’s own cultural history in the face of a Pinochet dictatorship keen to wipe it out.
Low-fi to a strength, the documentary consists almost entirely of footage within the couple’s home, much of it shot by Paulina herself, combined with archive materials from Augosto’s work as a journalist and their most personal home videos. Despite how contrived and intrusive the presence of a camera can feel in a confined environment, it quickly becomes a mere natural extension of the couple.
And while the opening scene might suggest a firmly miserable, devastating 85 minutes, Alberdi’s film is far more interested in love and hope than it is Augosto’s inevitable mental degeneration. So much of The Eternal Memory is populated with heart-warming glimpses of the couple making the best of their situation and finding joy in the most basic daily routines going right. Augosto retains a sense of humour about the inevitability of his condition, and despite the challenges it’s clear the pair share a loving, fulfilled relationship.
Yet Alberdi achieves this without sugar-coating or downplaying the progressive nature of the disease. In one staggering scene, Augosto cannot recognise a picture from his own wedding, nor later on even believe his own reflection is indeed himself. Frustration melds with paranoia as he wonders why his memory is fading, irrationally fears the absence of his friends and even his large book collection, and questions how long he’s destined to live with his condition. And of course, Paulina – a mesmerising portrait of compassion and patience – has her own palpable fear of being forgotten by Augosto.
The film ends before Augosto enters the later phases of his decline, preferring to train a tight focus on the day-to-day struggles faced by the couple throughout its breezy 85 minutes. And by shrewdly emphasising the life-affirming love story at its core, it avoids feeling like an exercise in misery porn.
Despite its inherently upsetting subject matter, The Eternal Memory mines tremendous humanity and empathy from an adorable Chilean couple living through the husband’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more film rambling.
