So, while it goes without saying that not everyone agrees with his or her parents’ politics, it’s still fair to point out that No is hardly the definitive account of what happened in Chile in 1988 and ought to be taken with a sizable grain of salt. All the same, it does not pretend to be a documentary; and the glimpse of those troubled times that it gives contemporary audiences, who may not even have been born yet when Chile reclaimed its democratic institutions, remains vivid and persuasive.
Part of the movie’s aesthetic power lies in the filmmakers’ decision to shoot all the new footage in the same crude ¾-inch U-Matic video format that was state-of-the-art for electronic newsgathering in the late 1980s, so that it blends seamlessly with the archival footage that makes up some 30 percent of what we see on the screen. Happily, although the cameras are mostly handheld, there’s very little of the deliberately vertiginous “shakycam” effects that have become so trendy in Hollywood of late. But often the lens seems directed at nothing in particular, so that we see a lot of fleeting closeups of the backs of people’s heads; and it often points directly into the sun or bright lighting, creating afterimages that establish a sense of calculated amateurishness. What we are getting, presumably, is supposed to be a people’s-eye view of a popular uprising.
Larraín’s fictional protagonist René Saavedra, however, drawn from Antonio Skármeta’s play El Plebiscito, is not exactly a Marxist firebrand. The son of a prominent Allende supporter, René (Gael García Bernal) has just returned to Chile after years of exile in Mexico, during which time he has become a true believer in the dogma of advertising and marketing, Norteamericano-style. He’s a successful producer of TV commercials for bourgeois consumer goods like soft drinks and microwave ovens, financially comfortable and distanced both from his wife Verónica (Antonia Zegers) and from her leftist politics. Their young son lives with René, who buys him lots of toys while Verónica gets periodically beaten up in demonstrations and detained by the police. René himself, it seems, just wants to be left alone.
But José Tomás Urrutia (Luis Gnecco), the executive producer behind the No advertising campaign, recognizes Saavedra as the savviest marketer in Santiago and courts him persistently. René reluctantly agrees to act as a consultant to the No faction, to the displeasure of his boss Lucho Guzmán (Alfredo Castro). René’s ideas – to avoid grim talk about Pinochet’s wrongdoings and instead pump up a sunny, vapid Pepsi Generation image of the No agenda – incur the scorn of many of the Old Guard of the opposition, who admit that they have no expectations of actually winning the plebiscite; they just want to stake out the moral high ground.
But test marketing shows the effectiveness of René’s Madison Avenue approach, and his vision begins to shape the campaign to a large extent. When the infomercials finally begin to air, they prove so popular that some members of the junta’s previously smug media team start to get nervous. They recruit Guzmán to try to beat Saavedra at his own game; the No campaigners find themselves followed home after meetings; René’s apartment is vandalized and his son is threatened. The higher the stakes, the more committed he becomes to the cause.
If all this is starting to sound rather like moviemaking that’s “good for you” instead of entertaining, despair not. For all the daily reminders that No’s characters face of the fact that they’re living in a police state, where uppity citizens sometimes come to violent ends or just vanish, the story is peppered with nuggets of dark humor, even satire. René’s faith in the power of happy talk on the air makes him seem feckless and naïve and a bit full of himself. But his devotion to his son’s safety does force him to do some growing up by the end, and to find satisfaction in a cause that’s bigger than soft drinks and microwave ovens. Whether you’re old enough to remember all the hoo-hah over Chile or not, No is a film worth seeing.
