I don’t have time to discuss my brief chat last night with Patricio Guzman, director of the elegant and poetic documentary Nostalgia for the Light, which I saw here last weekend. It’s basically a double-track exploration of two uses of Chile’s Atacama Desert — an ideal place for astronomers to watch the stars, and a location where the victims of Augusto Pinochet’s reign of terror in the ’70s were buried decades ago.

Nostalgia for the Light director Patricio Guzman and translator — Thursday, 9.16, 9:35 pm.

Guzman (who knows Guillermo del Toro from way back) struck me as an artist full of the right stuff. He’s thoughtful, perceptive, careful with words, a world-class gentleman, and has an aura of spiritual calm. We agreed at one point that people should always refrain from talking unless they can improve upon the silence. Good fellow.