When I initially signed up to see Neruda at the Cornell Cinema, I had absolutely no idea who he was. I simply signed up because I like going to the on campus cinema, and it’s sometimes fun to try things you know nothing about. The night before the movie, I mentioned to my girlfriend that I was going to some movie called “Neruda,” obviously betraying my ignorance. She gasped that I had not heard of him, and proceeded to passionately tell me all about his work and who he was and why he was so famous in Latin American culture (my girlfriend is from Puerto Rico). Hearing about him directly from someone I knew made me much more excited for the movie, and to learn about his life.

Maybe it’s because I’m not a film expert, but I struggle to think of a movie similar to Neruda that I could compare it to. The film balances two different style, fantasy and biography, kind of like how Neruda himself had two sides of his life, art and politics. A significant portion the movie borders on fantasy, though none of it was impossible. I mean fantasy in that the makers of the film took artistic liberties and speculated what COULD have happened during Neruda’s time as a fugitive. While they played with hypotheticals, the filmmakers also followed Neruda’s political downfall and subsequent escape to France. It was interesting seeing the film balance these two goals, while depicting a man who himself balanced a desire to help others rise politically but also express himself through poetry.

I’m glad the film did not sugar coat Neruda’s abnormal moral compass. He wrote beautiful love poems for his wife, but then would leave at night and go to brothels. Neruda didn’t depict him as having any regret, in fact he seemed to view this lifestyle as compatible with a  married one. It reminded me of the tv show Narcos, where Pablo Escobar would cheat on his wife but then scold or kill anyone who disrespected her.

I’m very happy I went to see Neruda, and would recommend it to anyone, especially if they’re unfamiliar with his work or want some insight into communist Chile.

Films like Neruda (most notably those of the Coen brothers) in recent years have been emerging more and more frequently, taking on a style inspired by documentary that when placed in a formulaic approach to storytelling (inciting incident, rising action, climax, denouement), takes an interesting spin on the biopic. I find this mix to be an inventive method for story-telling that is somewhat semi-fantastical and rather imaginative, that really speaks to the power of art and how it is able to use experience as a form in which to fit itself within in order to transform and/or heighten our understanding of that experience (to create a sort of logic or reasoning for the things that we do experience, to give sense to life). Director Pablo Larraín is able to do so effortlessly by merging reality and fiction, art and politics. He illustrates the relationship between President Gonzalez Videla and Pablo Neruda as one that is subtle, playing the fine line between the co-existence of these two parallel sphere: how politics feeds into art and how art in turn has the agency to determine or sway the direction of politics to a certain extent, and if not on that grand scope, at least on the micro level of influencing individuals’ understanding of people and how a system of people work, in turn creating empathy. I think here is where Larraín is incredibly strong—in building that empathy not so much for Pablo Neruda as for his invented detective character, Oscar Peluchonneau, who is an Apollonian balance to the rather Dionysian lifestyle Neruda leads but also adds a complexity to the hackneyed dichotomy of good and evil. It is this ability for art or film to share experiences that are “other” or outside of ourselves that the power of art has in creating culture.