One of the best film’s of the last year is finally arriving on UK shores on April 7th with the release of Neruda, the new cinematic marvel from acclaimed director Pablo Larrain (Jackie). The film, which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes back in February, stars Gael Garcia Bernal (Mozart in the Jungle) as a police inspector who is tasked to find Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco), who has joined the communist party.
But while on paper the film may sound like a typical biography, it’s actually much more than that: part surrealist tale, part deep glimpse into the mind of its protagonist, it’s a visually stimulating, refreshingly unique look at one of history’s greatest characters. Thus far the film has been met with universal praise and Larrain says they are thrilled with the response, saying:
“It’s beautiful because when you make a movie you have no idea how it’s going to go. It’s such a particular film so it’s been very exciting to see how it has played.”
SEE ALSO: Read our review of NERUDA here
Strangely Larrain has made two biopics back-to-back, with the aforementioned Jackie opening earlier this year to wide acclaim, and it shares many traits with Neruda in that both delve more into who the person was and how they thought rather than tell a conventional “cradle-to-grave” story. Larrain said that that “standard” was the starting but as a filmmaker before jumping into something a little different, saying:
“We started with a very conventional biopic… but I was struggling as I don’t like biopics very much so we went for something of an “anti-biopic” and what I got more comfortable with was and got excited about it was when we found Gael’s character because that was the door to have a different interpretation and to be playful with the story.”
Bernal, meanwhile, spoke of working with Larrain again after the duo teaming previously on 2012’s brilliant film No and that one Larrain had told him what he planned to do with this piece that the key to joining him once more, saying:
“It was the explanation of what Pablo said about how he wanted to make the film before I read the script and then again Pablo talked about the spin he wanted to give it… it was interesting from the script that this policeman character was also going to be a narrator and that there was going to be a literary game between them.”
A determined police inspector (Gael García Bernal) searches for Chilean politician Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco) after he goes into hiding in 1948.
NERUDA is in UK cinemas 7 April
