The Eternal Memory: A Beautiful Love Story With a Twist

The Eternal Memory is a new documentary by Maite Alberdi, whose last film was The Mole Agent (2020), a film festival favorite around the world, was nominated for an Oscar in as Best Documentary Feature in 2021. It was also one of only three documentaries among my twenty-seven top-rated films of 2020, making the honorable mentions list. The Mole Agent was ostensibly about an elder gent who was selected by a private investigator to infiltrate a retirement home in order to check on how a client’s mother was being treated there. In actuality, it is a film giving us a deeply humane look into the lives of old-timers generally, and those in such communal residences more particularly. It's brilliant, wonderful  film [available free on  Kanopy or with a subscription to Hulu; and also on many pay-per-view services, such as Prime and AppleTV+].

The Eternal Memory too is about aging but is more narrowly focused and way more personal. It’s a romantic story with a twist - not about the blissful, golden period when two people first fall in love, like most love stories, but rather about how that love is cherished and expressed in a long-term committed relationship, in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad. Also, as the title suggests, the movie is about the role of memory, how it shapes and informs who we are, why we love and what makes us human.  

The two principal characters in the film – both well-known public figures in Chile - are Augusto Gongoro, a prominent journalist, television presenter, producer  and cultural commentator, and Paulina Urrutia, famous stage, screen and TV actress, academic and social/political activist. Augusto was a prominent opposition journalist during the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet and then, with the coming of Chilean democracy in 1990, a leading producer and director for Chilean National Television. In addition to acting, Paulina became increasingly active in labor union issues and in 2006 she was appointed the first minister of the National Council for Culture and the Arts.

Paulina and Augusto fell in love and became a couple in 1997 and married nearly twenty years later  in 2016. Two years earlier, at age 62, Augusto had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.  When he became increasingly disabled, he resigned his professional positions in 2017. Not long after that, Paulina gave up her career commitments to focus her life on caring for her beloved Augusto. She threw herself into this project with everything that she had, unwilling to let him slip away into the fog of dementia without a fight.  Her aim was to help her husband maintain as much of himself and his sense of self for as long as possible. 

A major thrust of this care had to do with preserving, to the extent possible Augusto’s memories, both personal and professional. We watch as Paulina, carefully, almost playfully, asks him about and reminds him of his past –  showing him a video of his younger self, for example, being interviewed about the dramatic history that he covered professionally: the 1973 coup that overthrew democratically elected Chilean president Salvador Allende, the deaths or disappearance of thousands of dissidents under the repressive Pinochet regime, and the elation that came with the eventual return of democracy in 1990. Sometimes his memory is clouded - perhaps later in his decline (the timeline is intentionally non-linear) - and he is oblivious, not even knowing who Paulina is on occasion. But despite his dementia, Augusto often can remember the contours of this history, especially events that affected him viscerally, in a gut-level, emotional way – the horrors of government sponsored murders, for example. 

Just as importantly though, Paulina sustains Augusto by surrounding him with affection, reminding him that he is loved and always will be. Quite frankly, this is one of the sweetest, most memorable things I’ve ever seen in a documentary film. It is hard to put into words how and why their relationship, through such an obviously fraught time, is so touching to observe. We see this in such simple things as the loving look in Augusto’s eyes when he sees Paulina, and the tender affection in her eyes as she gazes at her husband, even or perhaps especially during those times when he seems most confused or disoriented. This is the definition of poignant, and I’ve read that when The Eternal Memory was screened at the Berlinale (Berlin International Film Festival) in February, almost everyone cried.

Paulina is astounding in her evenness, her resolve, her creative approach to the difficult situation she is in, the unwavering love with which she administers to her man and in the incredible force of her will. 

“The Eternal Memory is above all a love story,” director Alberdi says, “how love is lived in fragility, how to be a couple when there is no longer a complete memory. … This film shows what remains when everything is forgotten. The identity of someone who is never lost, who until the end has a tone that characterizes him, who never forgets certain historical events and who loves even when it seems he does not remember. [Yet] the body remembers.”

The idea for this picture first came to Alberdi while she was watching Paulina give a presentation at a university where  Paulina was the head of the theater faculty. Augusto, who already had Alzheimer’s at that point, was in the room, accompanying her at her work. Alberdi was fascinated: “She let him participate, interrupt; she was not ashamed. I had never seen a person with dementia so integrated into a caregiver’s life. She seemed to really enjoy having him there. … I enjoyed and enviously admired what they had: a love where the important thing is not what they were, but what they are today – and that they always have each other.” 

It was Augusto who convinced Paulina to allow this film of their relationship and his decline to be made. When Alberdi spoke to them both about a documentary, Paulina had questions, but he said, “I have no problem showing my fragility. I’ve made so many documentaries, why shouldn’t I want to be filmed in this situation?”  

Interspersed with the sequences of Augusto with dementia are clips showing him as a much younger man, and as a seasoned journalist – speaking clearly, assuredly, thoughtfully.  In his dementia, we see him in various stages - sometimes only mildly diminished, sometimes profoundly so – such is the nature of this disease. What remains well into Augusto’s dementia is a mostly upbeat and relatively placid demeanor, even when he is uncertain or confused about the who, what, where or when of his current situation.  Occasionally, when he feels most lost, he becomes distraught; but this just underscores his undiminished humanity. Who wouldn’t be distraught? Mostly though, he is just happy in the warm emotional embrace of his wonderful wife.

The Eternal Memory was completed in late 2022 and had its first public screening at the Sundance Film Festival in late January, by which time Augusto was in the final stages of his Alzheimers. Four months later, on May 19, 2023, he died. He was 71.

I recommend this film quite highly. It is interesting, touching, romantic (yes, really) and inspiring. Also unforgettable.

84 minutes In Spanish with English subtitles

Grade: A-

In a limited release: opened in New York on August 11, and continues its US rollout on August 18, 2023, in NY State, Los Angeles, Encino, Glendale, and in the SF Bay area at the Opera Plaza in SF, Rialto Elmwood in Berkeley, Rialto Sonoma County in Sebastopol, and Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.  Opening August 25 in Chicago, Austin, Miami, Seattle and elsewhere. Check HERE or at your local arthouse/international movie theater for more information.