Rethinking the Human, Rethinking the Essay Film : The Ecocritical Work of The Pearl Button

Abstract

In the essayistic mode, the performance of selfhood frequently questions the logic of subjectivity and its relation with the world. Taking up this core property of the essay film, this chapter explores its potential to further ecocritical approaches in film studies. It asks how grappling with non-human themes and aesthetics might further complicate and rethink not just the sovereign subject in documentary, but the status of the human more fundamentally. These questions are taken up through a close reading of Patricio Guzmán’s The Pearl Button (El botón de nácar, Chile, 2015), a film that examines post-dictatorship Chile by criss-crossing multiple spheres of interest, including the events of the military dictatorship, cultures and the impact of colonialism, astronomy, Chilean natural geography, with water as structuring concern across all.