Jackie director Pablo Larraín loses his way in a film built loosely around the fugitive years of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda
Pablo Larraín’s latest project is resolutely not a biopic. Hooked loosely to the life of Chilean communist poet and intellectual Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco), it follows bumbling private investigator Oscar Peluchonneau (Gael García Bernal, providing drily unreliable, hard-boiled narration) and his hunt for the fugitive Neruda, whose champagne socialism was, by 1948, incompatible with the politics of then-president Gabriel González Videla (Alfredo Castro). Some elements work, such as its playful noir-ish voiceover and vibrant palette of pastel pinks and violets. Ambitious, too, of Larraín to twist the historical fiction format, but overall, it’s a slog. Whereas in Jackie, Larraín’s previous film, the narrative felt thin, here the metafiction is simply bloated: the plot meandering, the pacing frustratingly low energy. “Love is so short, forgetting is so long,...
Pablo Larraín’s latest project is resolutely not a biopic. Hooked loosely to the life of Chilean communist poet and intellectual Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco), it follows bumbling private investigator Oscar Peluchonneau (Gael García Bernal, providing drily unreliable, hard-boiled narration) and his hunt for the fugitive Neruda, whose champagne socialism was, by 1948, incompatible with the politics of then-president Gabriel González Videla (Alfredo Castro). Some elements work, such as its playful noir-ish voiceover and vibrant palette of pastel pinks and violets. Ambitious, too, of Larraín to twist the historical fiction format, but overall, it’s a slog. Whereas in Jackie, Larraín’s previous film, the narrative felt thin, here the metafiction is simply bloated: the plot meandering, the pacing frustratingly low energy. “Love is so short, forgetting is so long,...
- 4/9/2017
- by Simran Hans
- The Guardian - Film News
After his Oscar-nominated Jackie, the director is taking on Nobel prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda. But what does his biographer make of the film’s freewheeling approach to the facts?
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood: all Pablo Larraín’s favourite films toy imaginatively with time. The director’s own much-praised 2016 drama, Jackie, is similarly non-linear. So it should come as no surprise that his new film about Pablo Neruda playfully and provocatively distorts the facts of an extraordinary year in the life of the Chilean Nobel prize-winning poet: Neruda is an anti-biopic.
The film is set in Santiago in 1948, at the outset of the cold war. The facts are these: already renowned for his Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, Neruda stood up in the senate (where he represented the Communist Party) and condemned Chile’s then-president, Gabriel González Videla,...
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood: all Pablo Larraín’s favourite films toy imaginatively with time. The director’s own much-praised 2016 drama, Jackie, is similarly non-linear. So it should come as no surprise that his new film about Pablo Neruda playfully and provocatively distorts the facts of an extraordinary year in the life of the Chilean Nobel prize-winning poet: Neruda is an anti-biopic.
The film is set in Santiago in 1948, at the outset of the cold war. The facts are these: already renowned for his Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, Neruda stood up in the senate (where he represented the Communist Party) and condemned Chile’s then-president, Gabriel González Videla,...
- 4/6/2017
- by Adam Feinstein
- The Guardian - Film News
Chicago – “In me nothing is extinguished or forgotten…” is a single line from a poem by Pablo Neruda (“If You Forget Me”), and succinctly describes the film tribute to him, written by Neruda’s fellow Chilean countryman Guillermo Calderón, and directed with grace by another Chilean, Pablo Larrain.
Rating: 4.5/5.0
Hot off Larrain’s other superior biography, “Jackie,” this exploration of an important life moment of Pablo Neruda is finely tuned, literary and archly cinematic. It’s a dreamlike journey, but never floats away, and is anchored by passionate characterizations from Luis Gnecco as the title character, and the always interesting and sharp Gael García Bernal. It is a cat-and-mouse game that may be just cat or just mouse, depending on how your point of view actualizes the story. Although bordering on vague, it ultimately is entrancing, and makes for a variable comparison to the equally virtuous “Jackie.” Larrain might have...
Rating: 4.5/5.0
Hot off Larrain’s other superior biography, “Jackie,” this exploration of an important life moment of Pablo Neruda is finely tuned, literary and archly cinematic. It’s a dreamlike journey, but never floats away, and is anchored by passionate characterizations from Luis Gnecco as the title character, and the always interesting and sharp Gael García Bernal. It is a cat-and-mouse game that may be just cat or just mouse, depending on how your point of view actualizes the story. Although bordering on vague, it ultimately is entrancing, and makes for a variable comparison to the equally virtuous “Jackie.” Larrain might have...
- 1/4/2017
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
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