The work of Chilean auteur Pablo Laraín’s has always stood out as unconventional. Not even his recent stateside venture with Jackie, which arguably took him closer to the gates of mainstream and earned a nomination for Natalie Portman as lead actress, could made him lose any of his habitual narrative edge.
With ‘Neruda’, Larraín defies every single rule of the much maligned biopic subgenre, crafting a fitting addition to his body of work which, until ‘Jackie’, had dealt with the open wounds of Chile’s historical memory, particularly on his trilogy about the country under General Pinochet’s dictatorship, comprised by ‘Tony Manero’, ‘Post Mortem’ and ‘No’. Going back in time years before the General’s orchestrated coup d’état, it introduces Pablo Neruda both as universally acclaimed poet and as a consolidated political figure, right when the president in charge, González Videla, outlawed the communist party and issued an arrest warrant against the Nobel prize writer for his pro workers revolution ideals.