Film Review: "No" (2012).

"This is the true story of a marketing campaign that sparked a revolution." This is No. This Chilean historical drama film directed by Pablo Larraín, written by Pedro Peirano, and based on the unpublished play El Plebiscito, written by Antonio Skármeta. In 1988, Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet, due to international pressure, is forced to call a plebiscite on his presidency. The country will vote YES or NO to Pinochet extending his rule for another eight years. Opposition leaders for the NO persuade a brash young advertising executive, Rene Saavedra, to spearhead their campaign. Against all odds, with scant resources and under scrutiny by the despot's minions, Saavedra and his team devise an audacious plan to win the election and set Chile free.

In the 1960s, Chile had one of the largest wealth gaps out of all the countries in Latin America. This led to the election of Salvador Allende, who became the first Marxist President to be democratically elected into office. The United States at the time, under the Nixon Administration, was afraid of the "falling dominos" theory that if one nation in the Americas shifted to the left, then the others will follows (the 1959 Cuban Revolution exacerbated this paranoia). On 11th September 1973, Augusto Pinochet assumed power in Chile following a United States-backed coup d'état that overthrew Allende's government and ended civilian rule. The support of the United States was crucial to the coup and the consolidation of power afterward. By December 1974, Pinochet was promoted to Commander-in-Chief and appointed Supreme Head of the nation. Following his rise to power, Pinochet persecuted leftists, socialists, and political critics, resulting in the executions of up to thirty two hundred people, the internment of as many as eighty thousand people and the torture of tens of thousands. According to the Chilean government, the number of executions and forced disappearances was three thousand and ninety five. On 5th October 1988, the 1988 Chilean national plebiscite, a national referendum, was held to determine whether Chile's de facto leader, Augusto Pinochet, should extend his rule for another eight years. The NO side won with nearly fifty-six percent of the vote, thus ending the General's sixteen and a half years in power. The fact the dictatorship respected the results is attributed to pressure from big business, the international community and unease with extended rule by Pinochet within the dictatorship. 

The film stars Gael García Bernal, Alfredo Castro, Luis Gnecco, Antonia Zegers, Néstor Cantillana, and Jaime Vadell. The cast gave terrifically low-key performances that conveyed Chile's downward spiral. Larrain and the cast craft the film as a slow, quiet character study, narrowing in on René Saavedra and the nation around him.

No is an eerie portrait of a disturbing time with disturbingly unconventional framings, expressively washed-out colour tones and mysterious low-key performances that bring together human drama and historical tragedy to unique, and surprisingly emotional, effect. The achievement of the film is to take rigorous and unsentimental measure of the unpleasantness.

Simon says No receives: