The Settlers, the debut feature from Chilean director Felipe Gálvez, casts an unflinching eye on the continent’s brutal colonial past. Turning the concept of the western on its head, he steeps the audience in a nearly unrelenting darkness to shed light on a hidden chapter of Chilean history.
Opening in the beautiful but forbidding landscape of Tierra del Fuego at the turn of the twentieth century, Gálvez wastes no time communicating the harsh realities of this world. As a group of workers build a fence, one has an arm ripped off in a terrible accident. MacLennan (Mark Stanley), the foreman mysteriously garbed in the red uniform of the British army, remorselessly puts him down. This callous disregard for human life sets the tone for the rest of the story, underscoring the inherent brutality of this place in time.
The vast lands the group is working belong to a man named José Menéndez (Alfredo Castro). While the story is fictionalized, many of the characters are based in historical fact. Menéndez is one of those characters, and the majority of the land in this region still belongs to his descendants today. In the film, he arrives with a mission for MacLennan: clear a path to the Atlantic and rid the land of its indigenous inhabitants. Reluctantly, MacLennan sets off with Texan mercenary Bill (Benjamin Westfall), and mestizo marksman Segundo (Camilo Aranciaba).
The trio, accompanied by an ever-present whistling wind and a chill almost palpable enough to be felt through the screen, soon spots the smoke of a small indigenous camp nearby and gear up for what they came to do. Under cover of morning fog, they slaughter and brutalize the inhabitants. The question of Segundo’s loyalty hangs over the sequence, and we wonder if he will participate. Will he mount what is sure to be a short-lived resistance? Or choose complicity and his own survival? Sadly, the brutal reality of this film allows no unlikely heroes, and this episode plays out in an all too familiar narrative.
Later bathing themselves in the sea, they are set upon by an even more threatening band of settlers. In a truly hellish sequence, the predators become prey, but there is no joy to be had in their comeuppance. Bill is punished for his transient loyalty and MacLennan is revealed to be a fraud (and worse), but this is a world undefined by neat and easy justice, a theme reflected in the film’s final act.
Leaping from the depths of brutality to the refined salon of Menéndez’ luxurious home seven years later, the audience bears witness to an entirely different kind of violence. On the eve of the nation’s centennial, Vicuña (Marcial Alonso), a representative of the president, arrives to do the work of sanitizing the region’s history, attempting to fabricate a positive narrative embracing the land’s native inhabitants. As he puts it, wool stained with blood loses its value, and he has arrived to do the washing. He finds Segundo and his indigenous wife Kiepja (Mishell Guaña) living a quiet life on the coast of Chiloe, haunted by the years they spent with MacLennan reigning terror across the pampas. Following a confession of sorts, the film ends with Vicuña posing the couple for a cheerful photo op, costuming them as his version of good “civilized” indigenous Chileans. The final frame holds a small act of futile defiance, as Kiepja refuses to smile for her oppressors.
The film’s closing credits run over real archival footage from the time, bathed in an evocative red, a reminder that while this story is fictional, it is grounded in a foundation of undeniable reality. Menéndez and MacLennan are not fabulations created for the sake of drama. They were real, and so were their crimes. Neither man was ever significantly taken to task for his crimes against the Selk’nam people, and only now, more than a century later, does this film begin to contribute to the correction of the legend of the region’s founding. Galvez’ film works to restore that truth to the historical record, and its message will remain enduringly marked on the viewer, not easily forgotten.
The Settlers is available to stream on MUBI from March 29th.
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