An antidote to the pretention of Tree of Life: Nostalgia for the Light

"Nostalgia for the Light" (2010?) by the Chilean filmmaker Guzman is a most unusual and moving documentary. It starts off quite slowly with many still camera shots of what at first looks to be heavy machinery but we soon see as an observatory telescope, then some stills of a rather antiquated kitchen and some old furniture, with Guzman's voice-over noting that this is his childhood home and where he first learned to love astronomy - gradually we shift to the Chilean mountain desert, apparently one of the best places for stellar observation and we start to learn about astronomy and then we learn that the same landscape, arid and hot, is a great place for archaeologists studying early people of Chile - two kinds of scientist/observers - and then, slyly, we learn that this same territory was part of the mining industry (and slavery) in Chile and more recently the locale of the Pinochet prisons and the burial site (mass graves) for political dissidents - and we meet people scouring the grounds for the remains of their loved ones - all different kinds of observation and science and examination of the past - billions of years ago, or 20 years ago - and all are connected in many surprising and subtle ways. Not long ago I watched the extraordinarily pretentious and overbearing Tree of Life, and this simple film makes many of the same points - connections between the cosmos and the individual - in a simple, clear, and moving way: one bloated highly publicized film compared with one simple, barely noticed film. Why would that be?