literature - FilmRoot

Film Buff Ranking: 3

Neruda is a rather special take on the famous Chilean poets life. Instead of focusing on his fabulous poetry, Neruda focuses on his Pablo’s run from persecution for being a communist. Throughout, Neruda is being hunted by a police inspector named Peluchonneau. In all, the film reminded me of a Borgesian short story with a hilariously Quixotic character.

Why watch Neruda?

You have read and enjoyed Borges
Multiple narratives – try and follow this one! Is it real?
Chilean history -communist persecution (for more on communist persecution, see a real account of the Indonesian death squads here)
For an interesting take on the biopic (think of Frida)

The Breakdown

The film starts with cameras following Neruda through a crowd. He makes his way through a government building greeting people next to him. He finally makes it through to a room where the president and the other senators are (for Neruda is also a senator), goes straight over to the urinal conveniently placed at the side of the room and berates the president out loud whilst he is taking a piss. What a scene! It certainly sets it up for a rather surreal and jovial film.

Neruda is a masterful invention. The character of Peluchonneau, played by the wonderful Gabriel Garcia Bernal, a character invented to embellish Neruda’s reputation. He is Neruda’s (or the director’s Larrain’s) puppet, a tool to show Neruda’s creative vision. Even the name Peluchonneau is perfect, as “peluche” in Spanish refers to a stuffed animal toy. This is exactly what Peluchonneau is, a character that is invented, used to entertain us, and then forgotten when we grow older. Luckily for the film and for us, the director and screenwriters script him perfectly.

Just like in Y Tu Mama Tambien, the events at the front of the screen take centre stage. You can see the effects of the communist persecution in the background. People are being dragged off to concentration camps, homeless kids are wandering the streets begging for money, and indigenous populations are being subjected to landlords. Furthermore these landlords deliberately break the law, just because the government does not care about them anyway. This is the real post-WW2 Chile, not the Chile concerned with a fictional or non-fictional chase of Neruda that pre-occupied everything else.

Conclusion

Neruda is definitely worth a watch. Fans of literature will love the construction of Pelloneau and his fictional existence. It is a little bit of a fight club in this regard. Pelloneau could not exist without Neruda and Neruda’s excellence is heightened by Pelloneau. As a Latin America Literature lover, this truly captured the unique spirit of the continent.

Many decades before the internet gave us nerd culture, there was Hugo Gernsback, an eccentric Luxembourgish writer and inventory who went on to become the father of modern science fiction.
Festival Scope

Tune into the Future tracks Hugo Gernsback’s life and inventions from his roots in Luxembourg and Europe, to finding his path and career in New York. It’s a story told with plenty of animations, interviews, personal anecdotes from his grandson, with references stretching from Tesla and Superman (Superman’s creator was inspired by Hugo’s publications).

Tune into the Future starts with some small square black and white footage of Hugo back in the day before the narrator interrupts the footage to tell us we’re missing the true (colorful) story. At this point the small black and white square footage expands to take up the entire screen and starts parading through images of Hugo’s fantastic speculative inventions from the future. The director, Eric Schockmel knows the inventions are the most eye catching part of Hugo’s work so he uses them to get us hooked in order to tell Hugo’s life story.

The director’s experience working with Museum Exhibits definitely shines through this documentary. He successfully manages to keep the audience engaged and interested throughout by mixing dry one on one interviews and personal anecdotes with animations that bring the anecdotes and Hugo’s ideas to life. It reminded me a bit of the educational YouTube videos made by Kurzgesagt – informative, but always engaging.

The way the documentary is presented matches Hugo’s own attempts to popularize science. He, like the director, used a mix of media to promote visions of utopia and drive interest in science across the world. In Schockmel’s case, he makes the film to rejuvenate Hugo’s efforts to popularize science in a time when experts and utopian ideas are being forgotten around the world. It’s time for the world to start dreaming again.