NO (Pablo Larraín 2012) Chile, France, USA

Reviewed by Robin Eriksson. Viewed at Santa Barbara Film Festival 2013.

NO directed by Pablo Larrain is a story about so much more than just living in Chile under the opression of Augustos Pinochet. It’s a story about wanting change and believing that you can achieve your dream if you really put your mind to it.

In this movie we follow the events taking place during the month leading up to the historic 1998 plebiscite, an country wide election to legitemize the claim of dictator Pinochet on the country. The movie revolves around the young and upcoming ad executive historic René Saavedra played to perfection by the talented Gael Garcia. His character is asked to come up with a series of campaign ad claiming that “NO we don’t want Pinochet here anymore.” A futile attempt according to most people since the popular opinion is that the election is already fixed with Pinochets victory already in hand. René who studied advertisment abroad decides to put a different kind of spin on the campaign, instead of showing all of the atrocities commited by Pinochets people, people dissapearing or turning up dead, he decides to show the people of Chile what they have the capacity to become if they only set their mind to it and unit against Pinochet with a solid NO. This movie is tugging on the heartstrings since for some reason i really connected with the people in this movie, especially the character of René.

What really interested me was the fact that it didn’t look like your typical Hollywood blockbuster movie. It almost had a DOGME feel to it. It was like they just placed a camera in the room while the real events were taking place. In the beginning this was a little distracting, but after I got used to it it really gave the movie that extra dimension of feeling real that a lot of other movies nowadays are missing. It’s no wonder this movie is being nominated for lots of awards, the Academy Award for best foreign picture being the most notable one. Even though it in my mind wil notl beat Kon-Tiki that’s nominated in the same category, it’s still a god darn good movie!