Neruda

This screening took place on Monday, September 11, 2017 at 9:00 pmYukon Arts Centre

Neruda' is a film centering on the life of famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who went into hiding in the late 1940s after being accused of being an enemy of the state for his communist leanings. Not a biopic but a bio-fic, this suspense thriller set in 1948 in inspired by the period in Chilean poet and Communist senator Pablo Neruda was forced underground and into exile by an authoritarian right wing government. Larrain filters the story through the eyes of the obsessive cop Oscar Peluchonneau (Gael Garcia Bernal) in hot pursuit, lending this fresh, compelling movie the air of a South American pulp detective novel with distinctly literary aspirations. IN SPANISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES. "Surprises always come at the end of Pablo Larraín’s films, when everything suddenly comes together and the audience sits in the cinema feeling both illuminated and floored. Neruda is no different, representing the director at his stunning best with a work of such cleverness and beauty, alongside such power, that it’s hard to know how to parcel out praise: script, cinematography, art direction and performances all vie for kudos and awards…" - Jay Weissberg, Variety "Equal parts history and imagination, this “anti-biopic” from Chilean director Pablo Larraín, set in 1948, tracks the beloved writer and statesman Pablo Neruda during the period when he was persecuted for his socialist politics and forced underground. However, it is worth noting that in Larraín and scenarist Guillermo Calderón’s conception, Neruda’s protagonist is not, in fact, Neruda (beautifully embodied by Luis Gnecco) but, rather, the federal policeman charged with smoking him out. In his hunt for Neruda, the otherwise unremarkable prefect Oscar Peluchonneau (Gael García Bernal) finds himself imbued with a sweeping sense of purpose and destiny. It’s almost as if Peluchonneau is Neruda’s creation – though, strictly speaking, the character feels drawn from a slightly different narrative tradition, one more akin to the stories of Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges or Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz. Which is to say that Neruda is a work of inspired mischief, in which the art of storytelling is inextricable from historical fact." - NNNN José Teodoro, Now Toronto