Colonia Movie Brings to Life Chile’s Sometimes Sinister Past

The Colonia movie brings to life Chile’s sometimes sinister past, including alleged Nazi associations that were explored in Hunting Hitler.

For anyone who watched the History television series Hunting Hitler, the Colonia movie is highly recommended.  This 2015 film brings to life the creepy Colonia Dignidad, with its alleged, murky Nazi connections, which were so intriguing at the end of Season Two of Hunting Hitler.  The extensive compound portrayed in the movie is a virtual dead-ringer for the one that was in the television show.

Aside from that, this is an excellent dramatic movie with plenty of hair-raising action.  Emma Watson plays a German stewardess, an occupation which ultimately proves fortuitous, who is swept-up in the political unrest of the early-1970’s Chile.  Her German boyfriend, played by Daniel Bruhl, who was excellent as Formula One star Niki Lauda in Rush, is a political activist who runs afoul of the repressive Chilean regime.  He is rounded-up and whisked-off to Colonia Dignidad for torture, detention, and highly-questionable spiritual revival.

Replete with abuse, Colonia Dignidad is a military compound/prison camp masquerading as a religious cult.  May God help you if you wind up in this church.  Watson’s character is released from the round-up and then tries to track-down her boyfriend.  She arrives at the gates of Colonia Dignidad in drab fundamentalist dress wanting to join the cult in an undercover attempt to rescue her boyfriend.  This heroic mission is as rare as it is compelling.  She just might be the most amazing girlfriend of all time, both wanted and needed, and full of chameleon like daring-do.

I have learned to live with the fact that the smart stuff, little independent and/or foreign dramatic gems like Colonia, usually cross my television in the wee hours of the morning.  One of my local stations is running them like a railroad at 3 a.m., Saturday, as an extended Friday night weekend kickoff.  This is also the province of distributor, Screen Media Ventures, LLC, and, here, the two met.  I like the little title sequences they do between commercials, a throwback to an earlier era of television.

Screen Media also operates the Popcornflix website where you can watch these same kind of films online.  A long time ago, I learned that Canal+ involvement was a mark of quality in the types of films I like.  Screen Media has entered my consciousness too, an under-the-radar source of some high-quality independent dramatic fare for the wee hours of the morning, something to be prized by both local television station programming directors and nighthawk, couch potato, film-buffs alike.

I noticed this film had some bad reviews.  Admittedly, I was predisposed to like Colonia because, in the entire three seasons of Hunting Hitler, the episodes featuring Colonia Dignidad were the most compelling.  Additionally, I was also interested because I had spent a few days in Chile ten years ago.  However, I just can’t agree with these bad reviews and found Colonia to be intense and gripping.

I saw the battle bus near here. How many guards can you see in this photo?

Governmental plaza area.

Even though this is blurry, a certain ambiance is crystal clear.

This is a captivating film in more ways than one.  Taking photos of a violent downtown Santiago military/police round-up is what got these two young Germans in dutch to begin with.  In my own one day in Santiago, I saw a bus at the governmental plaza area of downtown.  It was an older city-type bus, an echo of earlier times, perhaps even back into the early seventies.  It was a dark blackish-green and the entire thing was fortified with a steel-mesh armor covering every surface.  Whether this was to keep people out, or to keep people in, was a matter of my conjecture.  I thought about taking a picture of it, and wish I had, but something stopped me, not wanting to step even slightly out of line in a foreign country where who knows who may be watching what.  Riot bus or prison bus, the vibe coming off of it was palpable.

Old vibes die hard, especially in the shadow of armed military guards.  Santiago was a great place and I loved it.  But the sight of that bus had the chill of death.  That was one bus you did not want to catch.  If you want to see what the ride was like, then catch the Colonia movie instead.