Neruda

2016
R
1h 47m

IMDb RATING

6.8/10

11K

YOUR RATING

Gael García Bernal and Luis Gnecco in Neruda (2016)

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True Crime Biography Crime Drama History Thriller

An inspector hunts down Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who becomes a fugitive in his home country in the late 1940s for joining the Communist Party.An inspector hunts down Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who becomes a fugitive in his home country in the late 1940s for joining the Communist Party.An inspector hunts down Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who becomes a fugitive in his home country in the late 1940s for joining the Communist Party.

Director
- Pablo Larraín
Writers
- Guillermo Calderón
- Nazareno Obregón Nieva
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.8/10

11K

YOUR RATING

Director
- Pablo Larraín
Writers
- Guillermo Calderón
- Nazareno Obregón Nieva
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 18 wins & 36 nominations

Trivia
Several of the supporting characters in the film are based on real people who experienced the Videla era and Pinochet's 1973 coup. Neruda's then-wife Delia del Carril lived to be 104 years old, and died in 1989: the comment in the narration about her possibly living another four decades was accurate. Her house in Santiago (164 Avenida Lynch) is now a museum and cultural center. Alvaro (Alvaro Fernando Jara Hantke) who organized the effort to hide Pablo and Delia, was then a student in his twenties - he later became a respected historian, dying in 1998 at age 75. Victor (Victor Pey), the young Spanish-born engineer who offered his small apartment as a hiding place for the couple, helped copy and distribute Neruda's work - he survived until 2018, age 103.

Quotes
Álvaro Jara: What you want is a great escape. Yes?
Pablo Neruda: I won't play the fascists' game. I'll become their worst nightmare. In order to do that, I need to be a popular giant.
Álvaro Jara: You can't do that.
Pablo Neruda: I already have.
Álvaro Jara: No, you can't. People would say you used this persecution to become a saint. That we were never actually oppressed. That we like to play the victim. That we like to suffer. But they're killing us, for real. Look. I only ask you to be a bit more humble. Good luck on your journey.

Connections
Featured in 24 Horas Central: Episode dated 7 August 2016 (2016)

Soundtracks
Sabes que te quiero
Composed by Carlos Cabezas (as Carlos Cabezas Rocuant)
Performed by Danilo Donoso(Percussion), Daniel Espinoza (Trumpet), Bernardo Lama(Trombone), Fernando Julio(Contrabass)
Engraving, mixing and mastering in Estudios Cablesanto 2015 y 2016

User reviews34

Review

Featured review

8/10

Subtly Sophisticated

This is a fictional plot around the very real character of Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet who, during the 1940's, had also been a senator in the Chilean congress on behalf of the communist party. The film is set in 1948, when the authorities crack down on communists - a time that may be viewed as a chilling precursor to 1970's Pinochet - and the basic plot is about Neruda's escapes from the police, endeavors that force him all over Chile. Luis Gnecco as Neruda is fantastic and so is Mercedes Morán as Delia, Neruda's aristocratic wife. At one level, the film offer a troubling inquiry into the personality of this esteemed poet-intellectual-communist. He is an admired spokesperson for the workers and the downtrodden but he is also a hedonistic drunk and a spoiled womanizer; rough and gentle, strong and weak, Neruda's character and image keeps shifting, and it is to the credit of this film that it never for a moment tries to offer a solution to these complexities. In one memorable episode, a waitress asks Neruda, as he sits at a club-restaurant surrounded by his intellectual-hedonistic friends, suffused with alcohol, whether equality means that everyone will live like he does or whether it means that he, Neruda, will settle for less. I shall not disclose his response.

The camera-work covers a wide range of scenes, from film-noire urban settings to stunning snow covered terrains, all very precisely accompanied by period costumes, designs, motorcycles and horses. However the film aspires, and succeeds, to be by far more than a good period piece. Rather, it is a film about obsession. The psychological roots of this obsession are only hinted to, and this is a good thing too. And the obsessed is Gael García Bernal, playing the detective who relentlessly pursues Neruda. His performance is nothing short of stunning. As the film progresses, and it never rests for a moment, we gradually lose, alongside the characters in the film, any firm grip on reality. Just like in captivating poetic gestures, it becomes less and less clear what is real and what is fiction, what is an event and what is a fantasmatic representation of it, who is a character that actually acts and who is an imaginary ghost. And this is the film's most important achievement.