No (2012)
One of the Best Films of the 21St Century (thus far, July 2025)
Chilean writer-director Pablo Larraín began his career as agent provocateur (Tony Manero, Post Mortem) and then switched to the softer genre of melodramatic biopics about complex and famous women (Jackie, Spencer, Maria).
But his best film is No, in 2012, which offered a satirical jab at the 1988 ad campaign that contributed to dictator Auguste Pinochet’s professional demise. o
The ever-charming Gael García Bernal (internationally popular after the erotic tales, Alfonso Cuaron’s 2002 Y Tu Mama Tam Bien, and Almodovar’s 2004 Bad Education), plays the hipster marketer, who is hired to sell the pro-democracy “No” vote to the masses during the country’s 1988 plebiscite.
Rather than make it a depressing list of the leader’s low points in governing, however, Larraín chose a more colorful, both literally and figuratively, strategy,
History has already rendered judgement on how effective his effort was, yet Larraín’s fact-inspired story still keeps viewers guessing on whether he would pull it off or lose his own soul in the process.
No also illuminates how the mass media and national politics interfaced in the 1980s, celebrating a major triumph of well-intentioned propganda.
Visually, the events are captured in a scuzzy, low-definition video that’s stylistically suitable for that period.
