No

Set in 1988 and based upon real events, No is the third and final instal­ment of Chilean direc­tor Pablo Larraín’s tril­o­gy explor­ing the effects of the Pinochet dic­ta­tor­ship and it fol­lows the dark­ly com­ic one-two punch of Tony Manero and Post Mortem.

This time, Lar­raín casts his eye over the chang­ing role of the media in his country’s pol­i­tics. Gael Gar­cía Bernal stars as Rene Saavre­da, a slick, per­sua­sive ad-man enlist­ed by a coali­tion of anti-Pinochet par­ties to spear­head a ​‘No’ cam­paign (a series of 15-minute polit­i­cal TV com­mer­cials) which aim to depose the dic­ta­tor. Even­tu­al­ly fig­ur­ing that a cowed pub­lic are unlike­ly to find inspi­ra­tion in the grim, torture’n’tear-gas mon­tages cooked up by the team, Saavre­da resolves to infuse the cam­paign with the same relent­less­ly upbeat sheen he brings to cheesy ads for clients like Free Cola.

Not every­one is on board with his rad­i­cal approach (“It’s shit!” cries an old-school­er, before storm­ing out of a meet­ing), but after some ini­tial mis­fires, the sly­ly cyn­i­cal cam­paign of pos­i­tiv­i­ty soon proves dra­mat­i­cal­ly pop­u­lar with the Chilean pop­u­lace. It also pro­vokes a fear­some­ly cal­cu­lat­ed response from the ​‘Yes’ team, who count among their num­ber Saavreda’s ingra­ti­at­ing boss, played by fan­tas­ti­cal­ly sin­is­ter Lar­raín reg­u­lar, Alfre­do Castro.

With a prob­ing, insis­tent style redo­lent of clas­sic polit­i­cal thrillers like Cos­ta-Gavras’ Z, Lar­raín han­dles the nar­ra­tive with skill and econ­o­my, dig­ging deep into the details of both cam­paigns while the per­son­al stakes rise incre­men­tal­ly – it’s not long before the ​‘No’ team come under pres­sure from Pinochet’s thugs. Amid the esca­lat­ing dra­ma, he also dis­plays a gen­uine inter­est in his char­ac­ters, with a focus on the grow­ing ten­sions that devel­op in the ​‘No’ camp and a num­ber of ten­der­ly observed moments between Saavre­da and his young son.

There’s also an intrigu­ing thread which tracks the ambigu­ous rela­tion­ship between Saavre­da and his estranged activist wife (Anto­nia Zegers); her pas­sion and will­ing­ness to put her body on the line pro­vide a stark coun­ter­point to Saavreda’s aloof and dis­tanced cam­paign style.

As with Larraín’s pre­vi­ous two films, there’s also much humour to be found with­in the dra­ma. With fond inci­sive­ness, the direc­tor (who was 12 at the time of the ref­er­en­dum) mines the kitsch val­ue of the era’s pop-cul­ture detri­tus to great effect and there’s a fine run­ning gag about the inex­plic­a­ble appear­ance of mime artists in all the media Saavre­da cre­ates. No’s most strik­ing – and poten­tial­ly divi­sive – fea­ture is its aesthetic.

Lar­raín has opt­ed to shoot on video­tape on a vin­tage 1983 U‑matic cam­era – the stan­dard for­mat for most news pro­grammes until rough­ly 1990. With its glob­by, over-sat­u­rat­ed reds and lin­ger­ing streaks of light, it’s not always easy on the eye, but it’s a bold choice which fos­ters a brac­ing styl­is­tic uni­ty and works as a direct chal­lenge to per­ceived notions of authen­tic­i­ty in peri­od reconstruction.

Like it or loath it, you’d be hard pressed not to see it as a stag­ger­ing tech­ni­cal achieve­ment, as it’s almost impos­si­ble to tell where the exten­sive archive footage (includ­ing use of the real adverts) ends and the new­ly shot mate­r­i­al begins. In an amus­ing way, it’s as though Lar­raín is tak­ing a leaf out of Saavreda’s book in try­ing to sell us the past with visu­al trick­ery; luck­i­ly, it works like a dream.

The film’s look also has a dras­tic effect on Bernal, who is as mag­net­ic as the video­tape on which the film is shot. With his soul­ful stares and cut-glass cheek­bones, he’s still dev­il­ish­ly hand­some, but deglam­ourised by the brusque, mud­dy lines on the video­tape. The son of a polit­i­cal dis­si­dent, Saavre­da is a tan­ta­lis­ing, unread­able char­ac­ter and it’s a plea­sure to watch him grad­u­al­ly devel­op across the course of the film, even if we’re nev­er quite sure what’s going on behind those big brown eyes. His grow­ing polit­i­cal con­scious­ness, too, is ambigu­ous­ly observed and far from a Dam­a­scene conversion.

As No reach­es its stir­ring finale, there’s a hol­lowed-out look to Saavre­da; it’s as if he’s mea­sur­ing the spir­i­tu­al cost of his cru­cial involve­ment in a par­a­digm shift which has helped to remove a feared dic­ta­tor, but paved the way for a new polit­i­cal cli­mate of cyn­i­cal cul­tur­al manip­u­la­tion, venal adver­tis­ing and bland celebri­ty endorsement.