by
Julien
Faddoul
****
(4 stars)
d
– Pablo Larrain
w
– Pedro Peirano (Based on the Play by Antonio
Skármeta)
ph
– Sergio Armstrong
ad
– Estefania Larrain
m
– Carlos Cabezas
ed
– Andrea Chignoli
p
– Daniel Marc Dreifuss, Juan de Dios Larrain, Pablo Larrain
Cast:
Gael García Bernal, Alfredo Castro, Luis Gnecco, Antonia Zegers, Marcial Tagle,
Néstor Cantillana, Jaime Vadell, Sergio Hernández, Alejandro Goic, Diego Muñoz,
Paloma Morenoa
What
is it about the art of the motion picture that makes people do, think and feel
things that they never imagined they would? That’s a loaded question. The cinema
affects the mainstream human being in a way unlike any other art-form. Before the
cinema, intellectuals used to pontificate that the theatre was the greatest
art-form because it called upon all the other art-forms that preceded it. Well,
the cinema is one further, because it calls on the theatre and all the other art-forms. Even Leo Tolstoy famously became
extremely jealous when he saw his first motion picture: “But I rather like it.
This swift change of scene, this blending of emotion and experience – it is
closer to life. In life, too, changes and transitions flash by before our eyes,
and emotions of the soul are like a hurricane. The cinema has divined the mystery
of motion. And that is greatness.”
I
can’t help but also recall Joel Hodgson, creator of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, who, when asked why people found
making fun of movies so entertaining, he said: “Because movies, unlike other
art-forms, aim to present God’s idea of the world.” I guess every kind of
artistic expression has the power to change or enlighten people, no matter what
it is. But if Leni Riefenstahl had worked in any other medium – although I’m
sure she would have been a great artist regardless - I doubt something like Triumph of the Will (1935) would be as
powerful.
The
advertising world owes everything to the power of the cinema. In Latin, ad vertere means "to turn the mind
toward”. Advertising is a form of communication for marketing and used to
encourage, persuade, or manipulate an audience (viewers, readers or listeners;
sometimes a specific group) to continue or take some new action. Most commonly,
the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial
offering, although, as we all know, political and ideological advertising is just
as dominant. In summarizing it like that, if movies are God’s idea of the
world, then advertising is The Devil’s.
No, the fourth
film by Chilean director Pablo Larrain and the third and ultimate film in his purported
trilogy of impenetrable Pinochet-era satires, is a recounting of the political campaign
of the historic 1988 plebiscite of the Chilean citizenry over whether general
Augusto Pinochet should have another 8-year term as President and dictator, and
how advertising tactics were widely utilized in the process. However, No is a great movie – not good, great – and
thus, it is about much, much more. In the fashion of the great movies that were
Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd,
Sidney Lumet’s Network and Peter Weir’s
The Truman Show before it, No is an encapsulation of the manipulative
nature of the media and its rapidly escalating proportions, but it can be
interpreted in many other different ways.
Mr
Larrain himself, despite having family ties to the Chilean right-wing, is very
anti-Pinochet, and No can be taken as
a dedicated report and/or warning of the passionate, David-and-Goliath kind. It
can be taken as a comment on television’s (or technology in general)’s increasing
pervasiveness in our lives. It can be taken as an instance of situationists’ desire
to disrupt the spectacle, to remove the false tinsel that we are conditioned to
see and reveal the real tinsel beneath. It can be taken as a debate on the
means of artistic expression and whether, in art, its style that matters, not
sincerity. And it can also be taken much simpler than any of those, as a story
of a working man with a family who had simply had enough.
Gael
Garcia Bernal plays Rene Saavedra, a modish, young advertising executive – his
route to and from work is on skateboard – whom we first see pitching a new soda
as “the future of Chile.” His father was a famous activist, and his estranged
wife, played by Antonia Zegers, is a freedom fighter with jail time and bruises.
Rene, by contrast, can’t be bothered. What intrigues him to the campaign initially
is its potential as an advertising challenge, but he then becomes so captivated
with the campaign that he, against the wishes of his right-wing boss, played by
Alfredo Castro, goes from merely its consultant to its captain. The campaign takes
place in 27 nights of television advertisements, in which each side had 15
minutes per night to present its point of view. The NO team themselves are
inflicted with every kind of pressure, from the ongoing debates with each other
of stylistic merit to the cruel, private intimidation from the YES campaign. If
you are familiar with modern Chilean history, you know how this turns out, but
even so, every frame of the film is charged with such fermentation, such
rhapsody, that one becomes afraid to move in one’s seat. The screenplay, by
Pedro Peirano, is based on the unpublished play by Antonio Skármeta.
No is an ingenious
film and part of its genius is in its execution. Mr Larrain and his
cinematographer Sergio Armstrong have shot the film in low definition, 3/4 inch
Sony U-matic magnetic tape, which was widely used by television news in Chile
in the 1980s. It is both jarring and – especially for anyone who was alive and
had a television back then – extremely stirring emotionally. In doing this, the
film goes further from being a comment on the beauty and/or manipulative state
of the media, to a comment on the effervescence of the cinema. It imbibes us and
traps us into this cinematic lead-blanket that pervades the picture. Furthermore,
it allows Mr Larrain, and his editor Andrea Chignoli, to cut back and forth
with seamless precision to the actual footage of the time, including the
commercials themselves. It is a gorgeous trick to behold. Christopher Reeve,
Jane Fonda, Richard Dreyfuss and even Pinochet himself all appear as themselves
through archival footage.
The
ensemble in the film is a dream. Every actor is utterly specific and exact of
what he or she is about, but none more so than Mr Bernal. What has always categorized
Mr Bernal has been not the fact that he’s an incredibly talented actor, but the
fact that he’s an incredibly smart
actor. One can’t help but feel liberated when presented with his aching, concentrated
eyes and oscillated, impulsive smile. Along with great performances in Amores Perros, Y Tu Mama Tambien, The
Motorcycle Diaries and especially Bad
Education, Mr Bernal can now add another to that list. There are scenes in
the movie involving microwaves and toy trains that in another actor’s hands
would be insignificant; in his hands they are sententious.
Because
No is a film that can’t not be
trumped under the heard of a David-and-Goliath camp, it will no doubt be
subjected to criticism of its dubiousness. This has already happened in Chile,
where the film has received a mixed reception at best. Genaro Arriagada
Herrera, who directed the NO campaign, accused the film of simplifying history
and in particular of focusing exclusively on the television advertising
campaign, ignoring other crucial roles. I believe that because of the film’s
cinematographic format, people might interpret the film as documentary-like,
which I do not believe for a second is Mr Larrain’s intention. The movie is a
dramatization and a great one.
Another
misinterpretation might be that the film celebrates and glorifies the advertising
world, something that we probably shouldn’t be doing. This is beyond a
ridiculous claim and I can’t help but feel that these people were not watching
close-enough. Maybe Mad Men is to
blame? In any regard, No is a
brilliant film. There are seemingly inconsequential scenes of characters hardly
saying a word to each other that have more meaning in them than in any scene in
any Hollywood blockbuster I’ve seen this year. After I had sat down in the
cinema an elderly couple sat behind me. The man said to the woman “This is the
last time you drag me to a foreign flick”. When the movie was over I overheard
him saying “That was f***ing fantastic!” Chile! La alegria ya vieeene!
