Neruda (film)

Neruda is a 2016 biographical drama film directed by Pablo Larraín. Mixing history and fiction, the film shows the dramatic events of the suppression of Communists in Chile in 1948 and how the poet, diplomat, politician and Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda had to go on the run, eventually escaping on horseback over the Andes.
In 1946, Chile's president Gabriel González Videla wins the election with the support of the Communists, but later turns against them, banning the party and ordering mass arrests. Senator Pablo Neruda, a former ambassador and renowned poet, speaks out against the repression, putting himself in danger. With his wife Delia, he attempts to flee to Argentina through the mountains, but they are turned back at the border and forced to go into hiding.
Óscar Peluchonneau, a young policeman, is tasked with hunting down Neruda. To catch him, Peluchonneau believes he needs to know him, so he studies Neruda's life and poetry. Meanwhile, Neruda makes surprise appearances, leaving volumes of his poetry with people to mobilize resistance. A game of cat and mouse ensues, with Peluchonneau always a step behind. When the hunt becomes too close, Neruda's friends arrange for smugglers to take him over the border on horseback.
Delia stays behind and is interrogated by Peluchonneau. She tells him that every story has a primary character, and in this story, the cop is secondary. This remark unnerves Peluchonneau, who is never certain of his inner identity. Delia destroys his confidence by saying that Neruda, with his poetry and political commitment, is reality and will endure, but Peluchonneau is merely a fiction.
As Neruda's group climbs through the wintry forests towards the border, Peluchonneau follows, but he cannot catch up. He dies on a snow-covered mountaintop, bludgeoned by his own indigenous companions. Neruda later finds his corpse. Peluchonneau's hold on reality has ended, and he has melted back into fiction. Neruda flies to Paris, where he is welcomed by his friend Pablo Picasso and becomes a media sensation. During a press conference, Neruda mentions Peluchonneau's name, allowing him to live on through memory.
It was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. It was selected as the Chilean entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards but it was not nominated.
After the world premiere at Cannes on 13 May 2016, The Orchard and Wild Bunch acquired U.S and French distribution rights, respectively. It was shown at the Telluride Film Festival on 4 September 2016 and the Toronto International Film Festival on 8 September 2016. It screened at the New York Film Festival on 5 October 2016.
The film was released in Chile on 11 August 2016 by 20th Century Fox, in the United States on 16 December 2016, and in France on 4 January 2017.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 155 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "Inventive, intelligent, and beautifully filmed, Neruda transcends the traditional biopic structure to look at the meaning beyond the details of its subject's life." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 82 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".