Neruda (2016)

Waste of time

Please don't spend money on this.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

In post war Chile, Communist poet Senator Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco) enrages the political establishment. He decides to go into hiding as Óscar Peluchonneau (Gael García Bernal) leads a large police dragnet to arrest him. Soon, anti-communist repression takes hold in the country and many are imprisoned.This has too much of an artistic flair. I get the connection with a poet protagonist. I would like to understand the political climate at the beginning. Neruda talks about strikes. It would be helpful to see more of the anti-union brutality. It would set the stage for his initial escape. Not everybody knows the history or even who Augusto Pinochet is. I like the Captain Ahab aspect of Peluchonneau. It would be good to have less artistic flair. I want less literary exposition and more intense thrills. I like the turn as the political roundups take its toll and the darker character descend. There is a more intense take on this story but I'm not completely opposed to this artistic rendering.

It is very difficult to bring to the screen a person like Neruda, but my admiration for Larraín is much greater after seeing this film. Actors perfectly well executed. It is noticeable that there is a very large production behind. Gael Garcia Vernal is getting better every day as an actor. Congratulations to all, Latin pride

"Neruda" (2016 release from Chile; 107 min.) is a movie about the hunt for Communist activist, poet and Senator Pablo Neruda in 1948. As the movie opens, we see Neruda in an argument with another Chilean Senator after Neruda allegedly has insulted Chilean President Gabriele Gonzalez. It's not long before word reaches Neruda that he is about to be impeached, and he has no choice but to go underground and hide. The President appoint a special prosecutor, Oscar Peluchonneau, "to catch Neruda and to humiliate him", in the President's words. At this point we are less than 15 min. into the movie, but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.Couple of comments: this is another movie from Chilean director Pablo Larrain, whose other film, "Jackie" starring Natalie Portman, is still in the theaters. Before that, Larrain brought us another political movie, the Oscar-nominated "No". Here Larrain takes a look at the year or so that Neruda, "the most important Communist in the world" someone comments, goes into hiding while the Communist Party is being outlawed in Chile. In that sense, this is NOT a bio-pic about Pablo Neruda: we do not get any background as to how Neruda became so popular or what formed his political ideas or his poetry. The movie comes to us with a voice over from the special prosecutor Oscar Peluchonneau, as he gives his perspective on Neruda. This is quite helpful actually, as we understand better what Neruda was able to accomplish with his writing: they were not just poems of love, but many struggling people recognized themselves in these writing, and hence they became "poems of rage and political uncertainty". Kudos to Louis Gnecco for his performance as Neruda (not to mention the uncanny physical resemblance). Last but not least, the movie's photography is pure eye-candy and in a way the movie is unintentionally one long tourist ad for Chile (in particular the parts that play out in southern Chile)."Neruda" premiered to universal acclaim at last year's Cannes Film Festival. It finally opened at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati this weekend. The Sunday early evening screening where I saw this at was attended nicely, I am happy to report. How this movie did not get nominated for the Best Foreign Language Movie Oscar is beyond me. (There is a good reason why "Neruda" currently holds a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.) All that aside, if you are in the mood for an intelligent politically flavored movie about one of Chile's best known politicians and poets, you cannot go wrong with this, be it in the theater, on Amazon Instant Video or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray. "Neruda" is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Greetings again from the darkness. There is little offered by the history of the country of Chile that would lead you to believe that some laughs, giggles and chuckles are in store if you watch director Pablo Larrain's film about Pablo Neruda. But that's exactly what happens as we watch a police inspector hunt down the Nobel Prize winning Chilean poet and Senator. While you would probably not describe it as an outright comedy, it's a serio-comedy that will educate (a little) and entertain (a lot).The opening scene takes place in the men's room as a most serious Senate debate has flowed into an inappropriate locale. Apparently there is no relief during this time of relieving. It's here that Neruda's spoken words are as important as those he writes, and those spoken words lead directly to his need to go on the run. The poet/senator and his artist wife Delia del Carril become fugitives in their own country, and most of the film has them negotiating the Chilean underground. Set in 1948, three years after the end of WWII, a fascinating game of cat and mouse between hunter and hunted evolves. Director Larrain and writer Guillermo Calderon employ a generously creative license, and play quite fast and loose with facts resulting in a delightfully complex quasi-detective story. Luis Gnecco plays Pablo Neruda, and actually looks very much like the Chilean icon who was influential, but also a bit prickly and burdened with his own sense of entitlement. Gael Garcia Bernal plays Inspector Peluchonneau, who is charged by the President to hunt down and capture the now enemy of the state. It's a wild chase that involves up to 300 policemen in support of the Inspector who romanticizes the chase. The filmmakers have more fun with traditional story structure as the Inspector's internal dialogue questions whether he is the lead character … an idea that would never be considered by the man he is chasing.The film has a retro look and feel, and borders on farcical at times – the shots inside a moving car appear right out of the old 1940's detective movies. But the harsh realities of the times are never far removed. It could be a Picasso speech or a concentration camp director named Pinochet (soon to play a more important role in Chile). Neither the Inspector nor the fugitive make for a trustworthy narrator, but their different perspectives constantly provide us with more bits to consider.Luis Gnecco, Gael Garcia Bernal and Mercedes Moran (as Delia del Carril) are all excellent in their roles, and the use of music is spot on … especially the score from Federico Justid (whose work I noted in Magallanes and The Secret in Their Eyes). Director Larrain also released the high profile Jackie (with Natalie Portman) over the holidays, and deserves to be discussed as one of the more creative filmmakers working today. It's pretty tough to name another contemporary film that blends an oddball inspector, a tough woman losing touch, and a narcissistic fugitive – all with bases in reality, while never settling for something as mundane as the truth.