Pablo Larraín (2012)
This Chilean film tells the story of the referendum which ended General Pinochet’s fifteen years in power. The themes are very clearly laid out by Pablo Larraín and the screenwriter Pedro Peirano, who based the script on a play El Plebiscito by Antonio Skármeta. The referendum proposed a continuation of the Pinochet dictatorship for a further eight-year term. Both the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ campaigns were allowed fifteen minutes of television air time for each of the twenty-seven nights preceding the vote on 5 October 1988. The ‘No’ campaign developed a logo which reflected the rainbow coalition of the campaign’s members. Its left wing, epitomised by the doctrinaire Fernando Arancibia (Néstor Cantillana), sees this as an unprecedented opportunity to present the Chilean people with visual evidence of what the Pinochet regime has done since the military coup of September 1973: the outcome of the referendum is almost secondary. The more pragmatic ‘No’ supporters, led by José Tomás Urrutia (Luis Gnecco), realise they need to devise ways of getting the support at the polls of very different constituencies, who are otherwise likely to abstain. These include younger voters who cynically assume that the military government will, whatever the actual result, ensure that they retain power; and older Chileans, especially women, who, while they’d be happy to see an end to Pinochet, are enjoying Chile’s relative material wealth and don’t want to see the return of socialism.
The ‘No’ team persuade René Saavedra (Gael García Bernal), the son of a former political opponent of Pinochet but now a successful director of commercials, to develop promotional material for their campaign. Meanwhile, René’s boss Lucho Guzmán (Alfredo Castro) is recruited by the government to plan the ‘Yes’ campaign’s broadcasts. In his life outside work, René lives with his young son Simón (Pascal Montero). The relationship between René and the boy’s mother Verónica (Antonia Zegers) broke up – as a result, it’s implied, of René’s failure to share Verónica’s vigorous political activism. She’s scathing about the calculation and superficiality of the campaign broadcasts until she begins to see that the techniques René is using could be proving effective.
At first No seems so much a dramatised documentary – and is so dependent on actual film and television footage – that it feels thin. Perhaps it is thin, fundamentally: the synopsis I’ve written above certainly reads like an overly neat scheme. However, as the film goes on, Pablo Larraín’s skilful balancing of actualité and fiction is increasingly involving. The television campaign broadcasts, all of which I assume to be the real thing, are fascinating; and the ensemble acting is first rate. Gael García Bernal’s charisma means that René is the undisputed focus of attention but his playing is fully aligned with the penetrating naturalism of the rest of the cast. The strong bond between René and Simón is made all the more interesting by the child Pascal Montero: you’re in no doubt how much father and son love each other but the unsmiling Simón is uneasy too and vaguely reproachful (and Gael García Bernal is so miniature that René can seem like Simón’s brother rather than his father). One of the few unconvincing bits in the film, however, is when the military police break up and open fire on a big ‘No’ demonstration and René leaves Simón in their car amid this mayhem, while he goes to check on Verónica, who’s been arrested.
Bernal’s reaction when the official results of the referendum are announced – the ‘No’ vote was eventually 56% – is a perfect expression of disbelieving joy: the disbelief is such that the joy is interiorised. Because I was so ignorant of what actually happened – I assumed that the generals would suppress the true results and had thought it took much longer to remove Pinochet – I was able to share in the disbelief as well as the joy. The fact that I had a vague, but only a vague, idea about the methods of the regime helped make the episodes that show the immediate danger they pose more disturbing. René’s home is threatened during the night (Elsa Poblete, excellent as the housekeeper, is especially good in this sequence). Arancibia leaves a meeting of the ‘No’ campaigners to find his car surrounded by others in the dark street outside – he comes back inside and the group decide to leave the building together.
Pablo Larraín is nicely ambiguous about the use of commercial packaging to bring about beneficial political change. In the final scene, René and Lucho are back working together, watching René’s very amusing promo for an expensive soap opera. The camera closes in, for the final shot of No, on René. Some people will see in Gael García Bernal’s face regret that the techniques used to create this piece of work were the same ones on which political idealism had to rely in order for democratic government to return to Chile. But you can see a quiet pride too – a feeling on René’s part that he was able to use his professional skills to bring about the political ends which his father and Verónica had sought through different means.
No has been nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. I think it’s one of the best new movies I’ve seen in the last year but, if it won, you’d have to wonder whether Hollywood had been pleased to see a demonstration of what a humanly good thing commercial film-making can be. (We also see TV clips of stars such as Christopher Reeve, Jane Fonda and Richard Dreyfuss – the last-named speaking in Spanish – expressing support for the ‘No’ campaign.) The look of the film is extraordinary: the colour is desaturated and the texture of the images sometimes rough so that it appears to be film from the period in which the story is set (or earlier). A piece by Lucy Cave on IMDB explains this:
‘… the whole film is shot on low-definition, 3/4′ Sony U-matic magnetic tape (the same film used in the 1980s, when the story is set) and while it could be incredibly distracting, once the archive footage of the advertising campaigns comes on the screen, it starts to all make sense. Whilst some critics might complain that the low film quality has damaged any chance of making the arthouse-to-mainstream crossover, it’s still an incredibly bold choice, and well executed.’
17 February 2013
