MOVIE INFO VIS ROTTEN TOMATOES:
Chile, 1901. Three horsemen embark on an expedition, tasked with securing a wealthy landowner’s vast property. Accompanying a reckless British lieutenant and an American mercenary is mestizo marksman Segundo, who comes to realize their true mission is to violently “remove” the indigenous population.
REVIEW:
The Settlers is a grim violent film that updates the Western by filtering it through the view of the colonized. It doesn’t put on a pedestal those exploiters who raped, pillaged, enslaved and murdered native populations to establish their history and civilization as the dominant one.
Felipe Galvez puts the intentional genocide of Chile’s indigenous people at the hands of Spanish landowners front and center in his debut feature. Here, the brutal massacre of the natives of Tiera del Fuego region (which was an agricultural land grab, for the soon to be formed country of Chile) is documented with the revisionist brush. For a change, it’s the conquered whose story is being told.
Galvez who co-wrote The Settlers with Antonia Girardi and Mariano Llinas only uses the Western structure to ironically tell his story. The brutality of the expatriate American Cowboy, Bill (Benjamin Westfall) and the exiled British soldier, Mark Stanley (Alexander MacLennen) allows the native viewpoint to be the sympathetic one. The two forms of colonial exploitation and often the heroes of their respective manifest destiny cinema format, are now the villains. These murderers sent ostensibly to map the borders of the new Chile by erecting a fence, are really there under the command of the ruthless land baron, Jose Menendez (Alfredo Castro) to raze the land of native opposition so the planned future settlements can be built smoothly and uneventfully.
The viewpoint point and the sole indigenous main character, Segundo (Camilo Arancibia) seems to be getting a better job when his sharpshooting skills land him a valuable spot on the three man mission to clear grazing land all the way to the Pacific Ocean. For the first two parts of The Settlers resembles a Western with the warring Brit and American engaging in numerous pissing contests while Segundo silently looks on and absorbs everything in the background. When Segundo learns of the two’s true genocidal mission he tries to avoid participating until an act of violence he can’t avoid leaves him traumatized and regretful. He’s been forced to turn against his own people and must awkwardly live with the guilt and the shame.
The cinematography by Simone D’Arcangelo with its zooms and pans across the barren yet monumental landscape, layers everything with a rich yet bloody patina. It’s almost as if the violence and blood is genetic to everything both living and dead.
The settlers is an artifact of the brutal colonial vision, the blood on the family tree of a nation. Its’s a history that the natives, if given the option, would have nothing to do with. It’s a corrective to the glowing official narrative, and a much needed historical reckoning.
The Settlers gets a 3.5/5 or a B+. It’s streaming on Mubi.
CREDITS:
Los colonos
Directed by
Written by
- Felipe Gálvez Haberle
- Antonia Girardi
- Mariano Llinás (collaboration)
Produced by
Stefano Centini
Santiago Galleli
Thierry Lenouvel
Emily Morgan
Giancarlo Nasi
Matias Roveda
Starring
- Camilo Arancibia
- Mark Stanley
- Benjamin Westfall
- Alfredo Castro
- Marcelo Alonso
- Sam Spruell
- Mishell Guaña
- Adriana Stuven
Cinematography
Simone D’Arcangelo
Edited by
Matthieu Taponier
Music by
Harry Allouche
Production
companies
- Quijote Films
- Rei Cine
- Quiddity Films
- Volos Films
- Cine Sud Promotion
- Snowglobe
Film I Väst - Finite Films
- Sutor Kolonko[1]
Distributed by
- Dulac Distribution (France)
- MUBI (North America, Latin America, United Kingdom, Turkey, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Benelux and India)[2]
Release date
22 May 2023 (Cannes)
Running time
97 minutes
Countries
- Chile
- Argentina
- United Kingdom
- Taiwan
- Germany
- Sweden
- France
- Denmark
Languages
- Spanish
- English
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