Jan

20

Remember the great Costa-Gavras political thriller from 1969, Z, which was so powerful in impact that even today it resonates in iterations of many a realpolitik lenser across the globe? NO bears a strong resemblance to its forebears. It is almost documentary in its unflinching reproduction of that time, the late 1980s, and place, Chile.

In that earlier film, after the murder of a prominent leftist, an investigator (Jean Louis Trintignant, sleek, young and gorgeous, as he does not any more in Amour, for all its current cachet) tries to unearth the truth while government pols scramble to cover up their participation and culpability in the murder.

In NO, a critically important work as much for what it reveals about our own relentlessly bullying and fraudulent leadership and the tricks it pulls to hide responsibility and machinations from the public, the script follows the tense efforts of subversive democratic free-thinkers to rid themselves of the torture- and murder-rife dictator, Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet (written PIN-O-8 on cars in the movie, referring to Pin + 8 = ocho = chet) after the 1973 coup displacing President of Chile Salvador Allende as head of a popular unity coalition of communists and socialists.

In the palace bombing, Allende mysteriously disappears, one of over 1,000 desasparacidos (the disappeared, numbering tens of thousands, one protest of which I witnessed in silent witness in town squares when I visited, hundreds of signs and photo-affixed placards held up by the mothers, sisters, wives and brothers of the vanished-by-government) who disappeared under the vicious mandate of Pinochet, never to be seen again.

Due to international pressure following reports of thousands of tortured and murdered and disappeared citizens under his watch, Chileno military bruteman Augusto Pinochet in 1988 was forced to call for a plebescite on his presidency. Should he "win," getting a popular YES, his presidency would be extended another eight years (unstated, but obviously: of more of the same).

Opposition leaders for NO persuade a brash adman (Gael Garcia Bernal) to spearhead the campaign for NO on the plebescite, which seems to have little hope of winning. Such is the bully pulpit of dictators who control most of the media and the low-interest, low-information citizenry. Or nameless leftwing leaders with media clamps in their pocket.

The script, exemplary for its representation of both sides of the effort to displace the dictator, provides insights on the Machiavellian doings of Pinochet's defender-domos, and the advertising and PR men, exemplified by the soulful camera-eye visage the intense Bernal, manufacturing film and tape and promotional efforts to wean the Chileno public away from frightened, knee-jerk votes to continue the murderous, genteelly rampaging Pinochet.

Unseating the all-powerful Pinochet seems to be an uphill mano-a-mano, as he counters the NO campaign with silly echoing la-di-da campaigns of his own that make the public shake their heads.

WAG THE DOG (1997) and, more recently, ARGO (2012), come to mind. The public is being manipulated cunningly by those adept in the memes of persuasion, cajolery and propaganda massaged with pretty faces and breezy photography. Camerawork, and acting are uniformly superior. Hard to discern, sometimes, whether this is a staged film or a documentary.

Most Americans have zero idea of the abuses of South American near-dictatorships. News stations rarely report on anything below Mexico, unless it is an Earthquake of epic dimensions. Newsmagazines? Scarcely today even picked up (Newsweek is now solely online–not that anyone cares), so whatever they report is long-ignored.

Perhaps one failing of the film is that the interior dialogues and discussions assume a level of sophistication and familiarity that might be entirely beyond the Beyoncé- and Kardashian-addicted crowds that jam the multiplex. NO is not for those low-brow types. They get the current burnt frankfurter-and-mustard likes of DJANGO and THE GUILT TRIP. Low-hanging fruit requiring zero knowledge beyond where to sit one's glutamus down.

It is startling to see clips of Christopher Reeves (before his terrible accident), the traitor Jane Fonda, and [my faux husband] Richard Dreyfuss, on air with their actual testimonials, back then–amazingly, on behalf of NO, the side the audience clamors to support.

Excellent film worthy of awards already promised.

Go to see NO?

YES.


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