NZIFF Film Review: "Neruda" (2016).

"A renowned poet. An unknown inspector. A legendary manhunt." This is Neruda. This biographical drama film directed by Pablo Larraín, and written by Guillermo Calderon. The film follows a determined police inspector as he searches for Chilean politician Pablo Neruda after he goes into hiding in 1948.

At the tender age of thirteen, he became known as a poet and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, overtly political manifestos, and passionate love poems. His name was Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda. He rose to prominence for Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924), a collection of romantic poems. In 1971, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In addition to being a poet, he was also a diplomat and politician, occupying many diplomatic positions in various countries during his lifetime, this included serving a term as a Senator for the Chilean Communist Party. In 1948, when President Gabriel González Videla outlawed communism in Chile, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. He hid for months throughout the port city of Valparaíso; Neruda escaped through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Neruda eventually returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Chile's socialist President Salvador Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people. He then became Allende's close advisor. During the coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet that overthrew Allende's government, Neruda was hospitalised with cancer. On 23 September 1973, Neruda died in his house in Isla Negra, just hours after leaving the hospital. Although it was long reported that he died of heart failure, the Interior Ministry of the Chilean government issued a statement in 2015 acknowledging that "it was clearly possible and highly likely" that Neruda was killed as a result of "the intervention of third parties". Hours prior to his death, Neruda suspected a doctor of injecting him with an unknown substance for the purpose of murdering him on Pinochet's orders. Pinochet, backed by elements of the armed forces, denied permission for Neruda's funeral to be made a public event, but thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew and crowded the streets. Neruda now is often considered the national poet of Chile, and his works have been popular and influential worldwide. The Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language".

The film stars Luis Gnecco, Gael García Bernal, Alfredo Castro, and Mercedes Morán. Solid performances were given by the cast who all breathed cinematic life to their historical counterparts. In particular, Gnecco and Bernal's cat-and-mouse chase proved both intense and insightful into both men.

The best movie ever made about Chilean poet/politician, Neruda thoroughly deserves its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. Featuring an impressive lead performance from both Luis and Gnecco and Gael García Bernal, Larraín has successfully sculpted his most commercially-appealing film to date.

Simon says Neruda receives:

Also, see my reviews for No and The Handmaiden (아가씨).