NO, starring Gael Garcia Bernal

[strummergirl]

Posted: 4/13/13 at 2:09pm

If you are looking for a more serious movie, I would suggest seeing Pablo Larrain's Chilean historical drama, NO. I really should not have to sell a movie that already good great receptions at film festivals and earned a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination, but it is just that good.

The movie has earned comparisons to Mad Men (because, you know, advertising) and Argo (because, you know, a "political drama" movie with a pop cultural twist) but those comparisons seem reductive even in their good intentions. This movie is about the creation of the NO campaign during the 1988 Chilean referendum that will determine if Gen. Augusto Pinochet remain in power for another 8 years. The movie is not about trying to recreate that tension of 'Will he stay in power or won't he?' but about the process of trying for having an effective ad campaign, in balancing between trying to have a positive campaign when the reign of Pinochet created such dark and visceral reactions for several Chileans. One of the smartest things about the film is that Larrain shows you, in some cases in real-time, several of the ads used by both the YES and NO campaigns. It feels very inside baseball. The movie's deliberate aesthetic of VHS tape quality makes the breaks into the archive footage, that also includes seeing the very people involved in the '88 campaigns, feel and look seamless. It reminded me about how Michael Winterbottom and Shane Meadows have done their period dramas set around a similar period.

The criticisms that the movie posits this campaign took down the regime by itself never crossed my mind while watching it, although I have read a great deal about the whole take-down of Allende and life under Pinochet. To me it wisely makes Gael Garcia Bernal's ad man Rene a pretty simple protagonist who does his job, having the mind of an ad man than a political person who gets in trouble for his involvement dealing with threats and also the tension of his boss at his ad agency running the YES campaign, and leaving the question of how much the work transcended him or not pretty open.

Also, the jingle for the NO campaign will get stuck in your head long after the movie guaranteed.

Updated On: 4/13/13 at 02:09 PM

[tazber]

Posted: 4/13/13 at 3:27pm

Saw this back in December and though it was just brilliant. And yes, that jingle is inescapable.

strummer, if you haven't checked out Pablo Larraín's first two films in his Chile trilogy (Tony Manero and Post Mortem)I think you would really like them.