Pablo Larraín’s Jackie may have only just opened in UK cinemas, but we’re already looking ahead to the director’s next biopic, Neruda, thanks to this timely trailer. Here the Chilean filmmaker behind the award-winning No brings us another tale of his homeland’s fascist past with this partly fantastical account of the eponymous Nobel Prize-winning poet’s years on the run from the state police as, “the world’s most important communist”.
The story follows Pablo Neruda as he’s forced to become a fugitive in his own country following calls for his arrest for being the most influential member of the resistance against the Chilean government. What follows is a game of cat and mouse, as Neruda is chased across the country by chief of police Óscar Peluchonneau (Gael García Bernal). Think Catch Me If You Can with a whole lot more at stake.
But for all its backdrop of oppression and the war on free speech, the above trailer pitches Neruda as a film that tackles grave issues without negating the inherent thrill in a chase narrative. “This has to become a wild hunt”, the poet tells his comrades at one point, suggesting that Larraín has taken great care to capture his subject’s sense of adventure within his film.
One of the things that most impressed us about the film when it premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival was the director’s bold storytelling style, and if anything this teaser perhaps underplays the dreamy otherworldliness and magic realism which sets the film apart from your average biopic. A fittingly poetic tribute, rather than a film primarily concerned with historical accuracy.
Neruda is released in UK cinemas 7 April.
Published 23 Jan 2017
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