Northwest Film Forum

In Spanish, “ocaso” means “decline,” as in the setting of the sun, and a superior title could not be found for Theo Court’s portrait of an old caretaker on an even older Chilean estate. As he goes about the duties that he has performed—and others have carried out before him—for centuries, a crew of men and machines emerge to begin renovation on the house. The classic story of the worker who finds himself irrelevant is itself made relevant again, not only by Court’s stoic storytelling, but by cinematographer Mauro Herce’s shots, rich in their length, alive in their attention to light and darkness.