miriamday-35605
Neruda is a fabulous retelling of the poet Pablo Neruda's 1948 flight from Chile's fascist government. Playing fast and loose with historical event & cinematic tropes and conventions, director Pablo Larraín ("Jackie") invents an adversary for Neruda in the shape of the policeman leading the manhunt against him. Demanding the audience play detective too, the film blurs the line between real and imagined as both men seek to validate their own political position through their fantasies about the other. Playful and gorgeous to behold, it features 5 star performances from the three leads - including a brilliant comic turn from the ever-beautiful Gael García Bernal - and does not sentimentalise Neruda. But the truly revolutionary impact of his work is movingly articulated by an unexpected source - a transvestite singer in a brothel - as words are shown to have more power than force in this timely portrait of the most influential poet of the 20th century.
dickmckinlay
I agree with "jakob13" in his review of this fascinating movie. But I believe that it warrants more historical perspective, only hinted at in the movie. The influence of the US in enforcing its post-war anti- communist zeal throughout the Americas is mentioned, but not reinforced. The rise of Pinochet (also referenced in passing) is barely revealed. On balance, though, I'm not sure how much this matters, since the thrust of the movie is not historical recreation, but rather, the revelation of those aspects of character and consciousness that guide poet and public, hunter and hunted in extraordinarily threatening times.
jakob13
Like the poetry of Neruda, Pablo Larrain's film tells the story of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda during his years underground before he made his way to Argentina then to Paris. The narrative has a variety of styles: surreal, a political manifesto, autobiography and passionate love poems. Neruda embraced Communism, marked as he was by the Spanish Civil War that only the Soviet Union supported the democratic Republic that Franco and his generals overthrow during three years of violence. The film opens in 1948: Neruda is a senator and the Communist Party has strength among workers and peasants, intellectual and students, allies among the bourgois as well. And it hopes that soon it would be the government. Cut to 1948, the year of the beginning of the Cold War. The CPs in Italy and France met defeat at the voting booth. A 'coup' in Czechoslovakia brought the communists to power. Greece is in Civil War, and the fear of triumphant Soviet Communism has sent a shiver up and down the spine of North, Central and South America. Gonzales Videla outlawed the CP of Chile. Those like Neruda went underground; the less fortunate were rounded up, sent to prison, one governed by Pinochet and camps; still other were tortured, assassinated and became 'non-citizens', depriving them of a livelihood. And it is in this watershed of Chilean history, Larrain situates his film. We see Neruda, wonderfully embodied by Luis Gnecco, physically and magically in the way he uses language. as a devotee of luxury and sensual vices; he finds pleasure in bordellos, where fancy imagines a transgendered man sings his poems. And in the fleshpots, awash in champagne, you see the magnetic personality of Neruda. He finds a common thread of humanity and offers a message of class and human equality that is a fundamental truth of communism. The full measure of Neruda as a beacon of the masses is the oblique reference to the power of the Word; Neruda read in 1945 to 100.000 in Brazil his poetry that entranced the audience. In Chile, he addressed 10.000s and his poetry was read and sung by workers, by the common people. Of course his poetry speaks to them, but furthermore, he spoke to them of their condition, hopes and dreams and a common humanity that made Neruda dangerous to the government. An inspector played with understate by Gael Garcia Bernal. He is Oscar Peluchonneau, the illegitimate son of the creator of the national police. A child of the whore house, born with a venereal disease, says he. He is a personage who practices self-denial and austerities; he denies worldly pleasures and comforts. Tracking Neruda, he is like the Hound in Francis Thompson's poem. He has a talent for pursuing Neruda; he's intuitively keen, but he is no match for Neruda, who, contrary to Party disciple, roams the streets, visits prostitutes, to the existential pain of his minders. And as Neruda goes from hidden houses, he leaves a book of poetry for Peluchonneu, who diligently reads the poems. They don't chame him, only strengthens his resolve to capture Neruda; the capture of the poet would wash him of his low birth and to him worthy of a father who never really knew of his son. The camera takes us from cities to the Andes; it is well controlled and wonderfully filmed. We may be bewitched by Neruda the poet, and if we know something of Chilean history, a indebted morally or ethically by his politics. (With the rise of Trump, the film may also speak to what an authoritarian would do to those who don't hold his orthodox radical views.)
qeter
Seen at the Viennale 2016: every year there is a surprise movie. And we went for that. And it was Neruda. I wonder whether the shown digital copy was compressed (screening was in Gartenbaukino in Vienna). The colors were colorless and the images were blurred. The movie itself very slow. The getaway of communist and poet Neruda out of Chile is shown. It is told in poor poetic words and voice by his chaser, a policeman. It is not clear whether this policeman is just a fiction by Neruda or the real chaser. After few minutes in the movie it is clear that the hunt will fill the movie time and that the policeman will not catch Neruda. Only how the end will be arranged is not clear. That meant, sitting through a powerless movie, waiting for the final 5 minutes...
