Pablo Larraín's Neruda

With Neruda, Director Pablo Larraín crafts a film as poetic as its subject: Nobel Prize winning writer, senator, and political dissident, Pablo Neruda.

As right-wing forces are in the midst of locking down 1940s Chile, a ruthless cop named Óscar played by Gael García Bernal (pictured) is tasked with hunting down Neruda on charges as an outspoken and internationally renowned communist. As delicately as a beam of sunlight moving across a quiet room, the focus of the narrative shifts over the course of the film from Pablo to Óscar, whose frequent voiceovers are in many ways as sublime as Neruda’s own work. Eventually, their duelling forms of verse meld until it seems as though we may be seeing Neruda’s narrative as an author who is writing the story of his own villain — or perhaps even of two men, each having a dream about his adversary. THE WORD: The actors in both leading roles do exceptional work in a story that deepens steadily over the course of the film. WHERE TO WATCH: In Theaters