Someone I recently met grew up in Chile, and I heard her story about having to leave the country in the 1970's when she was about 13 because so many of the adult men in her life "were disappeared" (as they described it) by Pinochet. So this story caught my eye.
The imagery of the abusive, destructive right wing dictator as being almost impossible le to kill - even when it's what he himself chooses, is appropriately powerful. Is it ever possible to eliminate the ugly, most base elements from the human experience? I think an eternal, almost-impossible to kill vampire is an apt choice for what this character and others like Pinochet represent.
this sentence seems to me incomplete: "That same military regime overthrew the democratically-elected president Salvador Allende". it should read : "That same military regime, with the support of the USA who played an instrumental role in overthrowing the democratically-elected president Salvador Allende, fearing to have a socialist government in their backyard, and having their financial interests threatened by socialist politics". I recommend the reading of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Quite enlightening about the role of the CIA in overthrowing Salvador Allende. I guess this series does not mention any of that.
I don’t disagree with you that both the film and I leave our details of the US involvement in Pinochet’s coup--the CIA of course played an instrumental role in creating Chile’s dictatorship. I didn’t engage much with this in my review, but it is worth noting that Larraín himself has been engaging with Americanism in his films from the beginning. In “No”, the advertising executive Rene Savedra, who spearheads the 1988 anti-Pinochet plebiscite campaign, is himself a product of American advertising tactics. Mahnola Dargis says it beautfiully: “As an advertising whiz he embodies a consumer society in which everything — democracy, freedom, the self — is for sale. Rene helps the No activists wage war against one type of dictatorship, but an argument can be made that he represents another kind of tyranny, one in which freedom is reduced to freedom of consumer choice.” Larraín does something similar in “Tony Manero”, in which a horrifically violent serial killer is also fetishistically and paradoxically obsessed with the protagonist of “Saturday Night Fever”, an icon of 1970s Americana if there was one.
Someone I recently met grew up in Chile, and I heard her story about having to leave the country in the 1970's when she was about 13 because so many of the adult men in her life "were disappeared" (as they described it) by Pinochet. So this story caught my eye.
The imagery of the abusive, destructive right wing dictator as being almost impossible le to kill - even when it's what he himself chooses, is appropriately powerful. Is it ever possible to eliminate the ugly, most base elements from the human experience? I think an eternal, almost-impossible to kill vampire is an apt choice for what this character and others like Pinochet represent.
Ciao James,
this sentence seems to me incomplete: "That same military regime overthrew the democratically-elected president Salvador Allende". it should read : "That same military regime, with the support of the USA who played an instrumental role in overthrowing the democratically-elected president Salvador Allende, fearing to have a socialist government in their backyard, and having their financial interests threatened by socialist politics". I recommend the reading of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Quite enlightening about the role of the CIA in overthrowing Salvador Allende. I guess this series does not mention any of that.
I don’t disagree with you that both the film and I leave our details of the US involvement in Pinochet’s coup--the CIA of course played an instrumental role in creating Chile’s dictatorship. I didn’t engage much with this in my review, but it is worth noting that Larraín himself has been engaging with Americanism in his films from the beginning. In “No”, the advertising executive Rene Savedra, who spearheads the 1988 anti-Pinochet plebiscite campaign, is himself a product of American advertising tactics. Mahnola Dargis says it beautfiully: “As an advertising whiz he embodies a consumer society in which everything — democracy, freedom, the self — is for sale. Rene helps the No activists wage war against one type of dictatorship, but an argument can be made that he represents another kind of tyranny, one in which freedom is reduced to freedom of consumer choice.” Larraín does something similar in “Tony Manero”, in which a horrifically violent serial killer is also fetishistically and paradoxically obsessed with the protagonist of “Saturday Night Fever”, an icon of 1970s Americana if there was one.
🙌🙌🙌