NERUDA World Cinema

Director Pablo Larraín returns to Chilean history with a unique film about the difference between man and artist, person and persona. In 1948, betrayed by the supposed left-wing president he helped support, renowned poet and senator for the Chilean communist party Pablo Neruda went into hiding to escape arrest. Assisted by party members with more personal knowledge of the hardships of proletariat life than the regal and aristocratic Neruda, he and his Argentinian wife try to escape the clutches of the government as led by the dedicated and anonymous police prefect Oscar Peluchonneau. Less a biopic than a Nerudian imagining of what a biopic should be, NERUDA looks at one man’s life underground, beneath a society trying to repress passion, sensuality and solidarity for others. — Sudeep Sharma