Glasgow Film Festival Review ā Neruda (2016)

Pablo LarraĆn reunites with No collaborator Gael GarcĆa Bernal for Neruda, a film that pays tribute the crossing boundaries between film, poetry and literature. The result is a playful and vibrant piece that captures the power of Pablo Nerudaās movement and the dedication of the man who tried to put an end to it.
In post-war Chile, poet turned Communist Senator, Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco) goes into hiding after criticising the President in the National Congress. A manhunt for his arrest soon begins led by the fascist Chief of PolicĆa de Investigaciones Oscar Peluchonneau (Gael GarcĆa Bernal).
Narrated by Bernalās Peluchonneau, the cop driven by his desire to capture his target, Neruda immediately presents us with a brooding film noir feel. Yet, LarraĆn and screenwriter Guillermo Calderón inject Neruda with a meta-narrative that blurs the boundaries between literary forms. Peluchonneau is the main character in his narrative, struggling to come to with the fact that he is merely a ing player in grand poet Pablo Nerudaās story. Calderón presents us with characters self-aware of their role in the cat and mouse procedural ā each subject to the narrative conventions of their medium.
With readings of Nerudaās poetry, paired with the style of classic cinema (cars driving against projected backgrounds) and self-aware narration, Neruda is a playful and artistic piece that explores the blissful fusion of the arts through one manās impact on marginalised people. The setting of post-war Chile and the suppression of artistic freedom and politics (previously excellently explored in Alejandro Jodorowsyās The Dance of Reality and Endless Poetry) makes a fascinating canvas for this tribute to unfold upon. Sergio Armstrongās cinematography capturing bustling Chilean towns and coastal retreats, paired with the snow-covered Andes ā ensuring Neruda also reads like a love-letter to its gorgeous Chilean locales.
Yet praise should also go to Neruda as a high-octane police procedural and LarraĆn captures moments of tightly-wound tension as Peluchonneau is continually hot on the tail of the fleeing poet. Calderón fills the narrative with a comic sense of bad timing, with Peluchonneau regularly a few feet away from his obsession and those that harbour him. No sequence however, is as taut and breathtakingly beauty as the magnificently constructed final act where the two men finally come face to face on the picturesque Andes.
Gael GarcĆa Bernal is restrained and brimming with confidence ā chest-puffed and pristinely dressed, Peluchonneauās frustrated yet endless devotion to his quest makes him a magnificent antagonist/ protagonist (depending on your political leanings). Luis Gnecco captures the intoxicating charm of the well-read Neruda, yet itās the gradual hints and his desire to be caught that makes him a fascinating character.
Neruda is whimsical homage to the arts, captured through the guise of a remarkably tense political cat and mouse film.
[rating=4] | Andrew McArthur
Crime, Drama, Biography | Chile, 2016 | 15 | Glasgow Film Festival | 12th April 2017 (UK Cinemas) |Network Releasing | Dir.Pablo Larrain | Gael GarcĆa Bernal, Luis Gnecco, Mercedes MorĆ”n
Discover more from
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.