The Weekly Scene: No (2012)

In an era when so much of politics is determined by treating candidates and politicians like products, it’s not strange to think that an entire dictatorial regime fell through the power of influence and persuasion. Indeed, the advertising industry—and by extension, the ad-makers who run it—are today held in great contempt for their involvement in perpetuating a greedy economic model. For the people of Chile in 1988, however, when former president Augusto Pinochet—and model tyrant—put his presidency into jeopardy by allowing for a national referendum to determine whether he would maintain his position, the influential power of advertising allowed political reform to spread through their country.
Pablo Larrain’s No is a historically-based, but ultimately fictional, account of the events leading to Pinochet’s eventual ousting from the seat of Chilean presidential power. Starring Gael Garcia Bernal as a young and infinitely talented advertising executive, Larrain’s film serves as a quasi-historical recantation of events that treats the power of advertising as a strong force for social change. For North American viewers—who live in a political world where our politicians are entertainers as much as they are leaders and decision-makers—the film might seem like sentimental idealism.
As the film’s protagonist, Bernal plays Rene Saavedra, a Chilean man whose family fled the country in exile years before the film begins. Saavedra returns to Chile after his time abroad, and many of his close friends and co-workers see as an outsider who fails to understand the intricacies of the Chilean political machine. Remaining unconvinced that Chile truly can undergo major reform, his involvement in the No Campaign hinges on Saavedra’s idealistic belief in the rule of law. In Saavedra’s mind, it is the old who hold back Chile, while the young are forced to cry out for reform.
A script by Pedro Peirano plays on the notion of young vs old to craft a complicated story about a relatively simple concept: the young believe in change and reform, while the old are more comfortable clinging to the ways of the past. Once he is convinced of taking a physical stance in the referendum campaigns, Saavedra is quickly faced with the arduous task of convincing a nation that has been under 17 years of dictatorial leadership that ousting the devil they know and replacing him with the devil they don’t is an appropriate choice to make. As history shows, Saavedra eventually succeeds.
Larrain, however, chooses not to portray Saavedra’s success in a glorified light. A weaker film would have allowed the music to swell and the lights to brighten once it’s revealed that Chile is free from Pinochet’s rule. Instead, Larrain’s camera simply focuses on small situations; he focuses on moments of humanity and individuality. In No, characters are not conduits for great social change. Instead, they are regular people risking their lives for a cause that even they are uncertain will generate any political momentum. Interesting is the reserved manner in which each character is portrayed. In a sense, they are not characters—they are merely normal people.
Much of the film’s success comes from Larrain’s decision to shoot the film like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Instead of directing the story’s flow of events, Larrain’s camera acts as a silent observer. In short, Larrain’s camera avoids commenting on the subjects of his film, allowing their actions and their decisions to speak for themselves.
Alongside Larrain’s unique style, his decision to shoot No using a 1983 U-Matic video camera perpetuates the notion that the film presents itself as a collection of archived footage from 1988. According to Larrain, roughly 30 per cent of the film is comprised of archived footage, and he wanted to ensure that the viewer’s sense of immersion was not disrupted by having high definition modernity intrude on history’s often less-than-stellar pixel density. As a result of Larrain’s vintage camera, his film becomes a stunning portrait of the past—a film defined by its dedication to telling a story defined by history.
No is a curious film in the grand scope of cinema. It is, by all definitions, an expertly crafted feature, but much of its content relies on the viewer watching events unfurl as a passive bystander. Larrain’s direction does little to immerse the viewer in this world, instead allowing us to act as watchers from the future—we are allowed to look, but never touch. This disconnect ensures that Larrain and Peirano’s theses are articulated, but almost never directly explored.  A weaker film might pose an ominous question to the viewer: Advertising saved Chile, but what hell has it wrought? Instead, No simply presents history as it happened. It’s not a film about good triumphing over evil so much as a film about people doing their jobs, living their lives, and eventually ousting a tyrant from his seat of power.