TIFF 2023: The Settlers ‘Los Colons’
TIFFLos Colons is the atypical feature from a film festival. It is venture that looks incredible but says a lot about itself by saying nothing at all. For average audiences, it’ll be undeniably hard for this feature to find a home: it’s too visceral, to elevated, doesn’t say enough, and works on an unspoken visual provocation. Nevertheless, that is not to say it isn’t affective throughout its ninety seven running time as Felipe Gálvez Haberle’s feature is a visually beautifully-crafted outing with its often silent and muted approach deafening.
To say this venture is atmospheric would be an understatement. The mood and tension this feature holds from the first minute mark is intense to a point it’s actually quite uncomfortable, yet rightly so. Once this starts to clock in and reveal itself, it becomes evidently clear of what Los Colonos is and what it’s saying. The constant building of atmosphere, the dark nature of character and setting, the brutality and fear it holds in aggression is a documentation of the genocide and colonialism of its people and land. Think of mating The Revenant in terms of character and tone in a Mallick aesthetic of visual approach and Haberle’s Los Colonos is the birth of those two products.
This beautiful visual approach is no accident but design. Slowly but surely, the feature enraptures the audiences with its visceral beauty of landscapes and colour. Elements that become eradicated in the context of what the characters surrounding are doing and the atrocities they are conducting. It’s ever so effective for emotive immersion being climatized to this setting but seeing its beauty in setting and characters ripped to pieces is a haunting endeavour to behold and witness. The score from Harry Allouche is equally as effective here in this regard, encompassing the feeling of beauty yet dread in the same syllabus while elevating and heightening the material in emotive and immersive prowess.
Granted, this is not just a straightforward venture; it stylistically approached in terms of narrative in the form of chapters. Chapters that loosely follow a certain character or events. In comparison to the visual aesthetic, the chapter arrangement here doesn’t quite hit the mark. In terms of showcasing a passing of time or conscious effort to individualise a certain character, fine, it succeeds, but often than not feels a heavy added approach of festival avant-garde style for the sake of it to stand out rather than propel the material in elevation.
Nevertheless, said chapter like viewing is distinctive in its approach; while not overly effective, it does allow the viewer to grasp upon characters and situations that are quite foggy or not given clear transparency to what is happening on screen. Alas, this is ultimately what best describes the feature on a whole: distinctive in its approach while not overly effective. While that would not be held as a negative or condescending remark, Los Colonos hits a point in its thematic and visual trajectory that it simply does not have anything else to muster to break through. And while it’s incredibly bleak and horrifying to witness of uncompromising brutality, it does often run the risk of being pigeonholed and defined by that sensibility rather than the technical aspects envisioned.
