Neruda is a Chilean film directed by Pablo Larraín, presented at the Directors’ Fortnight at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.
Pablo Larraín and his screenwriter Guillermo Calderon immersed themselves in the poems and writings of Pablo Neruda, aiming to evoke the poet’s universe in the film, rather than just creating a simple biography.
We find ourselves at the end of World War II, with fascism and communism raging everywhere, particularly in Chile, where Videla, despite being elected by communists like Neruda (the excellent Luis Gnecco), then a senator, switches allegiances to pursue a far-right policy, throwing communist workers into prison by the truckload.
In Congress, Senator Pablo Neruda openly criticizes the government. Pablo Neruda is declared a traitor to the populist regime in place.
President Videla then calls for his impeachment and entrusts the formidable inspector Óscar Peluchonneau with the task of arresting the poet.
He must flee, hide… This very real episode—at least the beginning of the escape, between 1947 and 1949—inspires director Pablo Larraín to create a great visual poem, composed of short, unusual, caustic, and dreamy scenes.
In this dazzling anti-biopic, the filmmaker unravels everything, starting with the figure of the great man. It’s less about showing the facts than the effects: Neruda’s imagination, his impact on an entire people, his creative power escape, overflow, trick reality, and divert the narration.
The film becomes vast and vibrant like the “Canto General,” which Pablo Neruda was then writing. In pursuit of the artist, Oscar Peluchonneau, stiff as death and with a sinister humor that Gael García Bernal renders both pathetic and unsettling, provides voice-over commentary on the strange game of hide and seek—from the backstage of Santiago’s power to the infinitely white spaces of the Andes.
In this cat-and-mouse game, Neruda sees an opportunity to reinvent himself and become both a symbol of freedom and a literary legend…
Over this whimsical and free tableau of an era when poets were larger than life, promising with audacious confidence a fraternal tomorrow, the shadow of dictatorship also looms.
Reconnecting with his country’s political history and also featuring Mexican actor Gael García Bernal (Oscar Peluchonneau), Pablo Larraín tackles with “Neruda” (the excellent Luis Gnecco) a biopic of a somewhat unique genre, depicting the two years before his move to Argentina and then to Paris.
Pablo Larraín succeeds in the challenging task of giving his film a certain atmosphere. A fragmentary ambience, then, much like Neruda’s poetry, which, as the filmmaker himself acknowledges, aims to capture more of the rhythm of this poetry than the life of Neruda himself.
