Despite its extreme brutality, the grim and often disturbing subject matter found in The Settlers is a prime example of what our high school history classes should have taught us. For those raised on the same kind of insulting and inaccurate versions of historical events that I was, films like The Settlers offer a sobering look into how violence and capitalism tamed the world. Our textbooks often conveniently leave out how whole swathes of people were methodically wiped out to make room for exportable goods.
Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t good old-fashioned gumption and stick-to-itiveness that earned rich men their seats of power; it was genocide and theft. There were no bootstraps, only viciousness, weaponry, and the dispassion to use them on men, women, and children alike. Our history is disgusting, and while The Settlers shows us only a small glimpse of that history’s totality, it’s a glimpse that you may haunt you for some time.
Set in 1901 during the Selk’nam genocide in Tierra del Fuego, Chile, The Settlers follows a small group of hired mercenaries (Mark Stanley, Benjamin Westfall, and Camilo Arancibia) as they travel the countryside in the employ of José Menéndez (the real-life rancher and landowner responsible for the genocide, played by Alfredo Castro), with orders to annex or reclaim millions of acres of land occupied by the indigenous Ona people.
Leading the force is a Scottish veteran named MacLennan (Stanley, who is also based on a real-life genocide participant) who chooses an American cowboy (Westfall) and a mixed-race boy with a head for sharpshooting (Arancibia) to round out his company. Together, they wage the kind of terror only made possible by the absence of both law and basic humanity.
When I say The Settlers is a brutal story, I don’t mince words—and neither does its director, Felipe Gálvez Haberle. Although some of the proceedings seem to exist in a state of terrifying surrealism, this is a film based wholly in truth. Gálvez Haberle’s nightmares are not figurative or allegorical, as are often the case in stylized or artistically driven films. These historical miseries are instead presented in a way that conveys the absolute insanity of participating in a mass slaughter. It only seems surreal because it should be hard for any sane person to comprehend the vile reality of genocide.
But these things did happen, and very similar things are happening right now in Gaza. Like Elem Klimov did with his 1985 film Come and See, Gálvez Haberle insists we not look away from anything he shows us and urges us to absorb every moment. Then he asks us to judge not just our history accordingly but also our present.
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.