Neru­da – first look review

Chilean direc­tor Pablo Larraín’s form con­tin­ues with a mag­nif­i­cent film about Chile’s beloved poet, Pablo Neru­da. Part biopic and part cin­e­mat­ic impres­sion­ism, Neru­da begins with Lar­raín nat­u­ral­is­ti­cal­ly set­ting the polit­i­cal scene in 1948, with lots of char­ac­ters talk­ing in brisk and wry dia­logue (“Com­mu­nists hate to work. They’d rather burn church­es. It makes them feel alive.”) As land is crossed, the film’s tone becomes increas­ing­ly heady. By the third act, it verges into a kind of emo­tion­al fan­ta­sy, as two char­ac­ters bind to become one soul.

Neruda’s (Luis Gnec­co) posi­tion as a Com­mu­nist sen­a­tor by day, poet­ry-read­ing sex god by night is chal­lenged by the rise of fas­cism. Pres­i­dent Gabriel Gon­za­lez Videla out­laws com­mu­nism, so Neru­da takes flight with his Argen­tin­ian aris­to­crat wife, Delia del Car­ril (Mer­cedes Morán), to the sea­port city of Val­paraí­so. Their hide-out isn’t the opu­lent lifestyle that Neru­da has become accus­tomed to, but at least he’s still able to source naked women, and with the help of allies, pub­lish new poet­ry on the sly.

Mean­while, we meet the mys­te­ri­ous char­ac­ter who up to now has been pro­vid­ing an idio­syn­crat­ic and philo­soph­i­cal voiceover. ​“This is where I come in,” says the voice and sud­den­ly there is Gael Gar­cía Bernal. He is Oscar Pelu­chon­neau, the cop­per charged with bring­ing Neru­da to jus­tice. He would be classed as Neruda’s neme­sis if only he didn’t have the heart of an artist and the air of Inspec­tor Clouse­au. Bernal makes a fool of his char­ac­ter in the sub­tlest of ways. Oscar dress­es sharp, brim of hat tilt­ed just enough to amuse. He walks with a cock­sure swag­ger, which – as Bernal is small of stature and slight­ly over-styled in his maroon suit and neat mous­tache – is endear­ing, rather than aggressive. 

The poet and the police­man seems tele­path­i­cal­ly linked, as Neru­da leaves behind books which Oscar reads. Their thoughts are inter­linked and their per­spec­tives are inter­linked. When Lar­raín switch­es focus from one man to the oth­er, the tone stays the same, which is to say, pumped up with humourous lev­i­ty. Guiller­mo Calderón’s script is exquis­ite. Each line is infused with a rich­ness that suits the poet sub­ject. Despite a sto­ry arc con­cern­ing a man on the run, the atmos­phere is dreamy. The pur­suer con­sid­ers the pur­sued with rhap­sod­ic atten­tion to his par­tic­u­lars. ​“The poet is a pub­lic men­ace and an unfor­get­table lover,” he says wist­ful­ly over a radio bul­letin. A reverse Stock­holm syn­drome is hap­pen­ing and it begs the ques­tion: which man is this film real­ly about?

For although there are scenes galore of Luis Gnec­co embody­ing the full fig­ure of the poet, we don’t go inside his mind. Arguably this is because poets wear their insides on the out­side. Through con­ver­sa­tions with world­ly Delia, strate­gis­ing with polit­i­cal helpers and min­gles with all kinds of peo­ple who love him, a mag­i­cal force­field emerges. Larraín’s por­trait is about effect, not cause. This isn’t an ori­gins sto­ry. His Neru­da is already a tow­er­ing idol. 

Lar­raín pools all resources to build an atmos­phere of dreamy oth­er-world­li­ness. His cam­era zooms and scans at a pace that feels cal­i­brat­ed to make hairs stand on end. This is the sort of film in which light is often steal­ing the scene: suns glints on the lens, snow twin­kles under its glare, smoke dis­si­pates in great white shafts, as in the mid­dle of dusty rooms, men and women inter­act like enlight­ened souls.

Dri­ving the nar­ra­tive is the ques­tion of what will hap­pen when Pelu­chon­neau even­tu­al­ly catch­es up with Neru­da. The finale takes place in the Andes as Neru­da tries to cross the snowy moun­tains to escape to Argenti­na. By this point, it’s entire­ly plau­si­ble that one char­ac­ter is a fig­ment of the other’s imag­i­na­tion. ​“The poet tends to believe that the world is some­thing he imag­ined,” is a line that lends cre­dence to the idea that with Neru­da, Lar­raín has cre­at­ed a film that, above all else, abstract­ly evokes the essence of his sub­ject. It is a priv­i­lege to wit­ness the awe­some spec­ta­cle of one great man inter­pret­ing anoth­er and in this way cre­at­ing a sub-genre of mag­i­cal real­ism: poet­i­cal realism.