How they got to 'no'
Chilean director Pablo Larraín closes his Pinochet-era trilogy with the role a TV ad played in the ouster of the dictator, writes James Mottram
Pablo Larraín looks affronted. I've just asked the Santiago-born director if his trio of movies set in Chile in the 1970s and '80s - Tony Manero (2008), Post Mortem (2010) and the latest, No - were inspired by the current retro-thirst for revisiting these decades. "Oh, no!" he cries. "I'm more selfish than that. It's the ending of a trilogy of work that is larger than just fashion [for the past]. I think the story would be interesting if it were happening in the '80s or '90s or now. It's an amazing story. It's real."
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences agreed, with the Chilean nominee making the five-film shortlist for the best foreign-language film for this year's Oscars. Loosely based on The Plebiscite, the play by Antonio Skármeta, No is set in 1988, at the tail-end of the brutal 15-year regime of General Augusto Pinochet, which saw - according to human rights organisation Amnesty International - more than 2,000 people killed and several thousand more tortured by military forces.
Pinochet staged a referendum - a "yes" or "no" public vote - designed to gain a further eight years in office. Against all the odds, the "No" campaign, waged via a series of television advertisements, secured 55.98 per cent of the vote, leading to Pinochet's resignation.
Just 12 years old then, Larraín still has vivid memories of living through this remarkable period in his country's history. "What I remember is that when the campaign was on, everybody was looking at it," he says. "[There were] no cars in the street. The country stopped, [and was] just watching TV. There was no internet. Everything was through TV."
With the "No" side offered a nightly 15-minute TV slot to persuade voters to oust Pinochet, the film follows advertising executive René Saavedra (Gael García Bernal) as he constructs one of the most important advertising campaigns in the history of television. Using jingles and crude multicoloured graphics, it was hardly sophisticated. "Now we can laugh about it," says Bernal. "It was done with the rudimentary means they had in those days. But it was a very honest, hopeful and delicate thing to involve themselves in."
I think the story would be interesting if it were happening in the '80s or '90s or now. It's an amazing story. It's real
The way he sees it, it was the spirit of youth that drove the "No" campaign. "It was something young - [the idea was] 'Let's do something, let's promise the sun is going to come out in Chile after Pinochet leaves power'. And it's a very fair statement. In those days, Chileans were incredibly depressed. Chile was just a grey country. The culture had been chopped down. All the fabulous poets and singers that Chile had were completely stopped by the dictatorship. And all of a sudden these guys said 'Let's make a rebirth of Chile'."