NERUDA
(directed by Pablo Larraín, 2016)
***+ (out of 5)
.
> Stylish, stylized retelling of the cat-and-mouse game the celebrated Chilean poet and Communist politician played with dictator Augusto Pinochet’s secret police.
. It’s kind of a noir affair- again reminding me of the central conflict in LES MISERABLES: Both are stories about unjustly persecuted individuals being hounded by agents of the law who are single-mindedly focused on enforcing a black-and-white version of justice. Here, the pursuing lawman is the charismatic Gabriel García Bernal, in an oversized performance that is all pose and no subtext. What you see is what you get with this guy. He is brutal and corrupt, yet clueless and ironically prone to poetry himself. His character provides a voiceover narration that is artificially poetic in the extreme, as though the officer were trying (and failing), to match the florid prose of the fugitive he seeks.
. As for the great literary figure himself, (played with gusto by Luis Gnecco), Neruda is presented as a pleasure and ego driven personality who is somewhat clueless about his effects on the world around him. This Pablo Neruda seemed to tip the scales to carnality and sensation at the expense of ideals and politics. Pablo is presented as a man without boundaries, vulnerable to flattery and prone to bombast and drama. He takes delight in being one step ahead of his Javert. We can’t help but be less certain of his ultimate safety than he appears to blithely be. The production values are set to a high standard, conveying a solid sense of time and place, but this is not quite enough.
– NERUDA is good but a bit episodic, and doesn’t really make an attempt to get below the surface of either the pursuer or the pursued. A bit of a missed opportunity.
*
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