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DIRECTED BY: Pablo Larraín
FEATURING: Jaime Vadell, Gloria Munchmeyer, Alfredo Castro, Paula Luchsinger, Stella Gonet
PLOT: Auguste Pinochet, former dictator of Chile and centuries-old vampire, contemplates whether it is time to finally die, and invites his family to his remote compound to discuss the dispersal of the fortune he looted from the country.
COMMENTS: In a world filled with so much death, it is one of the cruelest ironies that the people you want most to die never seem to oblige. Day after day, they go around fouling the very air they breathe and incurring your helpless wrath, a fact that honestly seems to fuel them and stave off their seemingly inevitable demise even longer. Sure, they may give off signs of ill health or mental decline, but they never actually take the crucial stuff of shuffling off, no matter how many Big Macs and Diet Cokes they clutch in their tiny hands. It’s exasperating.
Pablo Larraín feels your pain. Augusto Pinochet finally exited the Chilean presidential palace in 1990, but he continued to linger in the world for another 16 years, and in the public consciousness still after that, his crimes having had an immeasurable effect on the psyche of the nation. It probably explains why so much of Larraín’s career (when not profiling the notable unhappy women of the 20th century) has been devoted to examining Chile’s troubled soul. Still, El Conde marks the first time that he has confronted the man directly, and that appears to be because he has finally figured out who Pinochet really was: an undying, bloodsucking vampire.
Mapping the traits of a legendary monster onto the life of the man who disappeared thousands of dissidents turns out to be a fairly short walk. Pinochet’s hunger for power is attributed to his beginnings as a loyal soldier in the army of Louis XVI, where his distaste for revolution and anti-monarchal movements were born. From there, he goes from country to country helping to stamp out uprisings, until he finally arrives in Chile to lead the violent overthrow of the socialist government of Salvador Allende. Invoking the vampire legend is a canny choice, because it not only connects Chile to the broad historical arc of oppressive dictatorships, but provides a context to help understand the grotesque body count under Pinochet’s rule. It actually becomes more comprehensible to attribute it to a monster.
The luscious black-and-white cinematography (courtesy of Edward Lachman) lends an authenticity to the story of exclusively awful people. Vadell is suitably cadaverous as Pinochet, and his retinue — his duplicitous wife, his loyal majordomo, his venal children — all embrace their evil eagerly. The one character who never really clicks is Carmen, the undercover nun who Luchsinger infuses with a kind of wide-eyed wonder in almost every moment. This is intriguing when she openly encourages Pinochet and his family in their delusions of victimhood and entitlement, confusing when the narrator is telling us that she is an immensely powerful instrument of vengeance, and truly spectacular when she clumsily but eagerly takes on the capacity to fly. Compared with the vampire Pinochet’s austere, imperious flights over Santiago, Carmen’s tumbles in the sky are genuinely enchanting.
Ah, that narrator. She turns out to be the most important character in the piece, as her plummy upper-crust British tones point the way toward the film’s larger thesis. If you have an ear for voices and think she sounds awfully familiar, you’re probably right. It really is too delicious a secret to be spoiled (if you absolutely must know, let me just say that giving it away even by showing you a picture would be Crass), but it speaks to the larger metaphor that Larraín wants to convey. Pinochet, he tells us, did not arise out of the mists unbidden and commence a reign of terror. He was made, birthed by the same forces that always seek to enforce a rigid division of haves and have-nots and to reap the benefits. Ultimately, El Conde is not really concerned with the specifics of Pinochet or even Chile. It’s about the vampires who have sucked the lifeblood of humanity for centuries and (as the epilogue shows us) will continue to do so. We can take some comfort in the knowledge that death comes for everyone, but the evil that feasts on our ideals, our arts, our conception of what it means to be free… that evil is undying and elusive. The wish is not enough.
El Conde is a Netflix exclusive.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
“…kinda funny, very weird… The quirkiness of the characters and their brutal honesty create dialogues brimming with acid humour and sarcasm. This form of communication, along with the surreal situations that take place, make a very original and entertaining piece…” – Lucía Muñoz, Cut to the Take (contemporaneous)
(This movie was nominated for review anonymously. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
