132. The Settlers (Los colonos); movie review

 

THE SETTLERS

Cert 15

100 mins

BBFC advice: Contains strong violence, injury detail, sexual violence, very strong language

"Was it really as brutal as this 120 years ago?" I asked.

"Yes" was Mrs W's unquiviocal response.

Murder and rape are the norm in the frightening outback of Chile, where law and government have yet to reach.

Felipe Gálvez Haberle's bleak but intense movie is set in the deep south in the Tierra del Fuego at the beginning of the 20th century when European and South American livestock companies created large ranches.

Violence flared between non-indigenous settlers and native Selk'na people, so the ranchers, gold miners and soldiers set out to exterminate the latter.

In The Settlers, Alfredo Castro's character has land that stretches for hundreds of miles, and he needs to find a route to the sea to export his sheep.

He gives the task to a merciless English army lieutenant (Mark Stanley), giving him carte blanche to kill native people whom he encounters along the way.

He chooses to take along a mixed race sharp-shooter (Camilo Arancibia) and has an American (Benjamin Westfall) foisted upon him by his boss.

The three have mutual loathing, which doesn't help when they must band together against what they see as hostiles.

The film is split into three chapters - an introduction, the trio's journey and the political aftermath.

It also stars Sam Spruell as a former British army colonel, Mishell Guaña as a feisty native and Marcelo Alonso as a political envoy.

They combine in a South American western, which conjures thoughts of how hard life must have been back in the days of world exploration and how terrible man can be to man.

Reasons to watch: Remorseless western with historical edge

Reasons to avoid: Very violent

Laughs: None

Jumps: None

Vomit: None

Nudity: None

Overall rating: 8/10

Did you know? Historians estimate that the genocide spanned a period of between ten and twenty years resulted in the decline of the Selk'nam population from approximately 4,000 people during the 1880s to a few hundred by the early 1900s.

The final word. Felipe Gálvez: "I didn't want to kind of put myself in this position of moral superiority and saying, oh, look, I'm better than other people. I wanted to say rather, we're all doing this to kind of take a self-critical stance and see how filmmakers, photographers, everyone in this industry is also complicit in terms of how we've taken part in colonisation." Borrowing Tape

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