The Twentieth Century has cursed many nations with their fair share of ghosts. Few historical figures of that time escaped without a fair share of blood on their hands. Some have had the benefit of winning global contests, and are deemed heroes. Some – like Chile’s Augusto Pinochet – are viewed explicitly as monsters. This month marks the fiftieth anniversary of Pinochet’s coup of the Allende’s socialist government. His reign was marked by political terror, financial corruption, and harrowing stories of torture and murder. Pablo Larraín, perhaps the world’s most famous Chilean filmmaker, is making a fanciful, conceptual take on the most hated man in his country’s history. Pinochet passed away in 2006, but his reign of terror has given him his own kind of immortality. He may live in infamy, but in a way, that means that he still lives.
In between making beloved films about the tragic women of history (Jackie, Spencer), Larraín has made several films exploring the emotional and political consequence of his home country’s most turbulent years. His 2012 film No is a brilliant, passionate film that takes a fascinating vantage point on Pinochet’s inevitable fall. 2016’s Neruda is a windy version of a biopic that sympathizes with the antagonist before burying him under his own insignificance. (I simply have to mention that both films contain some of the best acting of Gael García Bernal’s career.) I tend to prefer this version of Larraín, even if he does prove to be an unreliable guide, getting lost in the forests of his own intellectual exercises. In his Spanish-language films, the grief of oppression is rarely met head-on, but instead translated through aesthetic. In El Conde, that aesthetic is the vampire film.
Jaime Vadell plays Pinochet. Not only is he still very much alive, but he’s also a vampire who’s been living for 250 years. The film’s first act details his beginnings: a parent-less scamp coming of age in revolutionary France. A soldier for Louis XVI, he rebranded as a peasant after the king and his queen, Marie Antoinette, were guillotined. Exploring the world as a soldier for various nations (which allowed him to sample the blood of thousands and to develop a palette for what he liked the most), Pinochet settled in South America where he was able to make the leap to general in Chile. Experienced in the vanquishing of unwanted enemies, he gladly took down the Marxist-Leninist government of Salvador Allende, and carried out brutal killings in the name of anti-communism. This position earned him great power and fame, but his actions also meant one thing: his people would never love him.
These days, Pinochet lives in exile. The world believes him dead, but that was just a rouse to keep him hidden from the scorn he’s amassed. His five children (the hilarious ensemble of Catalina Guerra, Marcial Tagle, Amparo Noguera, Diego Muñoz, and Antonia Zegers) are desperate for him to actually die, coveting an inheritance that feels like it will never come. His wife, Lucia (Gloria Münchmeyer), plays both sides: cosying up to her beloved while also preparing for her own life after he’s gone. Pinochet’s most dedicated servant, Fyodor (Alfredo Castro), a Russian royalist and anti-Bolshevik, is the only person who Pinochet has trusted to also turn into a vampire. In turn, Fyodor tirelessly serves the man who gave purpose to his vicious bloodlust. Fyodor may be the one person in this story more murderous than Pinochet, not the architect of the violence but its most passionate executioner.
For the first time in years, Pinochet decides to fly from his provincial home and into the city to hunt for blood. His preferred meal is a still beating heart pureed into a bloody smoothie. This inspires his children to visit him, as the behavior seems to belie a man whose most frequent request is death. When a nun named Carmen (Paula Luchsinger) is dispatched by the church to exorcise the demons inside Pinochet, she arrives to a family filled with distrust and resentment. They think she’s an auditor who will help cook the books for their father’s inevitable death, while Pinochet himself sees her as an excuse to stay alive. Carmen’s endgame in all this is part of a conclusion that is both convoluted and (for lack of a better word) wacky. Larraín enjoys the provocative mixing of sex and religion, politics and blood. El Conde can be enjoyed as an unsolvable puzzle, but that’s only if the audience is willing to bypass the frustration of not understanding what’s going on.
The film is shot by Edward Lachman, the cinematographer most known for working with Todd Haynes. El Conde is shot in an inky black and white. The decrepit visual palette is beautiful in its way while still maintaining the undead quality that the movie courts. Larraín is not a director beholden to a visual style, though his films have always been handsome in their own unique ways. El Conde might be the prettiest looking movie he’s ever made, which is ironic since it is also his most violent film, filled with several hard-to-watch sequences that seem to beg for a sickening response. This contrast between stunning photography and unsettling imagery is the one true constant held throughout Larraín’s filmography, and El Conde is a great example of that.
El Conde misses the transcendence of Larraín’s best movies even if it does feel like its own kind of triumph. The script (by Larraín and Guillermo Calderón) almost makes a game out of searching for meaning and ending up with nothing. The movie doesn’t aim for cynicism but ends up there for lack of options. An English narrator dictates past history as well as current events throughout, and when you learn why in the film’s third act, it might be difficult for you not to roll your eyes. Larraín is using the conceits of fiction to embellish the monstrousness of the real world. I’m not sure if this is most successful political argument, as there is no fictional creation that could be more atrocious than what Augusto Pinochet actually was. As a cinematic argument, El Conde knows what an audience can expect from a certain kind of monster, and Larraín is asking you to imagine: what if it were worse?
Directed by Pablo Larraín