De La Salle University Dasmarias

College of Liberal Arts and Communication

Social Sciences Department

Prelim Main Task

COLONIA

Mr. Jose Aims Rocina

Bautista, Marnee F.

Cerrero, Jian Claudette

Lopez, Imee Lorraine I.

Mendoza, Christine Joyce S.

Prado, Loren Dorothea N.

Villamor, Maria Aubrey B.

 I. PLOT
The story revolved around when Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile via a military
coup in 1973, the dark era that followed had repercussions for decades. Thousands and
thousands were killed or disappeared, families were torn apart, and dissidents were brutally
silenced. The scars and wounds from that time are still healing, and the discussion of what
happened during those years is still a difficult one in the country. Unfortunately, none of the
potentially incendiary drama that one might expect from a film set during that time can be found
in Colonia. Instead, the rather routine thriller that glances against the politics and fear during
Pinochets time in power, and the decision to tell the story through a pair of foreigners, also does
much to mute some of the impact of the tale.
Daniel Bruhl is handsome German activist and hes only been in Chile for a few months,
but in that time, he has become a key figure in the movement thats behind Allende. He has no
shortage of allies, but his heart belongs to beautiful flight attendant Lena. Her job flies her into
the country often and her latest trip finds her arriving during a particularly charged time, with talk
of possible civil war breaking out. Instead, after some relationship-establishing romance, Daniel
and Lena wake up to find the coup underway. Daniels friends are rounded up, and when he hits
the streets to try and photograph whats happening, hes snatched up as well. Lena hops off the
bus and into Daniels arms for a few blissful days of love and activism, and then, boom, the
coup hits, and theyre out on the streets. Daniel, so ardent he cant help himself, gets himself in
big trouble with the militia after hes spotted trying to document their repressive activities with his
camera. Lena and Daniel are shipped to a soccer stadium for processing and Daniel gets ratted
out. Lena soon finds out that Daniels likely been taken to the south, to the headquarters of a
religious sect actually, cult run by another German, named Paul Schfer.Identified by a hooded
figure as an Allende supporter, hes whisked away to Colonia Dignidad Dignity Colony which in
Orwell-worthy irony, is actually a cult camp/torture prison.Lena tries to get the rest of Daniels
activist buddies to band together and rescue her boyfriend, but when they demur, she takes it
upon herself to infiltrate the camp and get him The plot takes a turn for the far-fetched when,
disguising herself as a woman dedicated to the Lord, Lena makes her way to Colonia Dignidad,
where shes allowed to join with little questioning,Lena, on learning of this place, dresses way
down and hides there, trying to go undercover as a God-seeker. Schfer himself, played with
effective imperious chilliness by Michael Nyqvist (who also manages an unnerving resemblance
to the real-life figure) sees through Lena immediately, and has her unbutton her drab blouse to
reveal a lacy bra underneath. He accepts her into his flock anyway, and soon shes farming the
land in sexually segregated non-splendor, keeping the Men and women are separated and live
apart from each other, adhere to lifestyle of celibacy, toil in the fields, and are subject physical,
emotional, and psychological abuse at the slightest infraction. Meanwhile, their moods are
controlled by daily forced dosages of pills. And running the whole machine is ex-Nazi Paul
Schfer, who rules with a ruthless, sadistic hand, while colluding with Pinochet officials to
provide them with arms and poison gas (in a plot thread thats left dangling and unexplored).As
Lena gets embedded in the camp, she begins her hunt for Daniel. Hes been subjected brutal
rounds of electrocution to get him to name the accomplices he worked with for Allende.
However, he keeps his mouth shut, and thinking hes been too brain damaged to be of any
value, hes released into the camp. But alas, its all a ruse, with Daniel playing mentally disabled
as a cover to document the atrocities at the camp, and plot his escape.Its very convenient that
Lena is saved from a gang beating by an alarm being tripped by Daniel, completely by
coincidence. Daniel discovers the organization is also an illegal operations center for DINA.
Lena and Daniel attempt to escape from Colonia Dignidad along with Ursel, a pregnant nurse.
Ursel is killed and both Lena and Daniel escape to the West German embassy. Staff from the
embassy betray them but the lovers exit the country via a plane with incriminating photographic
The overthrow of a democratically elected leader, the imposition of a fascistic military
strongman on a population, the years of human rights abuses and crony capitalism that
followed; the history of Chile from the early 1970s right into the early 20th century provides any
good liberal-minded thinking person plenty to get steamed about.

II. RELEVANCE
III. REACTION

According to Loren Dorothea N. Prado,

According to Imee Lorrraine I. Lopez, A lot of critique says that Colonia or The Colony
was a living proof of fascism and lurid story. With social unrest and a lot of political tension
around the world, this movie is regarded as significant worth on certain matters. The story
 focuses on a rough adventure between a couples association in their anti-government views
that led them to be caught up in a shady ex-Nazi religious cult located in rural Chile country
and had to find their way out before they get executed by a bunch of cults. It was purely an
internal struggle under the influence of dictatorship on a greedy institution which makes the
situation even worse.

The movie introduces us to the ugly and hard-hitting truth behind the negative
consequences of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. After watching Colonia, I felt
disappointed on how they delineate the difficulty and struggle encountered by the characters.
Although it shows significant features of what happens in a violent uprising, I hate the part when
women were subjected to violence as an entertainment to men in the missionary. It is an
institution that should not been built in the first place. Imagine the trauma youll get in case you
caught up in a situation like that.

Colonia allowed the viewers to look at the complexities of an international coup dtat
through the influence of a dictatorship. We could see how things are complicated in political
arena presented with many opposing ideologies. Regardless of the circumstances, Im relieved
on the last scene where they were able to reach the plane and finally escape that place.

If followers of Pinochet are still withholding its shady principles in Chile it would be a nice
move and will give justice if neighboring countries or UN Charter would address the exploitation,
human rights abuses and violence not only in Chile but also to places where this kind of
situations exists. We should be wary on the consequences of military coup dtat or military
repression to the people and should avoid the occurrence of any bloody or savage conditions.

According to Maria Aubrey B. Villamor,

According to Marnee F. Bautista, The Colonia whose Spanish name translates,

perversely, as Colony of Dignity was actually a cultlike sect overseen by an evangelical
megalomaniac who sexually abused dozens of boys while colluding with General Augusto
Pinochet to torture prisoners of the Chilean dictators repressive regime. As played by Swedish
actor, Schfer is an unctuous devil, a little of whom goes a long way. The film suggests
Schfers predatory nature by showing us a crying boy exiting his office; there is also no need to
show the man padding into a boys shower in his bare feet in a later scene.

Fortunately, Colonia does not center on Schfer or his pedophilia, but on two of his
adult victims: Daniel (Daniel Brhl), an expatriate German political activist, and his girlfriend,
Lena (Emma Watson), a Lufthansa stewardess who infiltrates the prisonlike Colonia after her
boyfriend is arrested and sent there for interrogation by Pinochets goons. As the film implies,
Pinochet, who came to power in 1973, was a novice at the torture game. He needed the
expertise of Schfer, a former member of the Hitler Youth who fled his homeland after he was
charged with sexual molestation of children in 1959.

The action of the film is, by necessity, extreme. Brhl and Watson lend it some needed
subtlety, even when the script calls for Brhl to pretend to be brain-damaged (after being
hooked up to a car battery and beaten senseless).

Although genuinely gripping at times, uncomfortably so the tale of Lena and

Daniels efforts to escape from Colonia and expose its abuses suffers from a heavy-handed
telling. One character in particular, the overseer of the female workers (Richenda Carey), is a
tad too Nurse Ratched. And its hard to believe that Daniel would have ever been able to
surreptitiously steal a camera and then photograph, develop and make prints of pictures of the
torture chambers without being detected. The Gestapolike security implemented by Schfer
included attack dogs, electrified fences, barbed wire, searchlights and tripwire guns.

With respect to the intention the filmmakers, they might have had to make modern
audiences aware of a particularly barbaric South American regime and its excesses are lost in
this story of atrocity and madness. The movie's exploitative nature, with its emphasis on brutality
and graphic scenes of torture and torment -- as well as sloppy plotting in which so much
depends upon lucky circumstance and coincidence -- might have been categorized as
necessary to help the viewers visualize the truth and to remember this significant yet often set
aside part of history.

According to Jian Claudette Cerrero, As I witness the movie Colonia which also entail
the public humiliation and mass beating of young women. The movie turns into a prison break
film where Lena tries to get Daniel out alive, while Daniel keeps pretending hes a retard to
escape and so that he can fool the baddies and plot his flight to freedom. Moreover, the movie is
filled with various action film tropes like cue the chase scene through a network of underground
tunnels and then some late twists that are fairly easy to telegraph.
 Colonia Dignidad was founded in the mid Fifties as an educational society to promote
and preserve German culture, language, and education. Eventually it turned into this very sort
of creepy, closed bunker in south central Chile that housed some pretty unsavoury individuals.

The Rettig Report, released after an investigation into human rights abuses by the
Pinochet dictatorship, found evidence Colonia Dignidad was used as a torture camp and
housed political detainees from 1973. There were hundreds of torture camps that have been
well documented Siavelis says, And Colonia Dignidad was one of them.

IV. CONCLUSION