One of the five Best Foreign Language entries for the 2012 Oscars is this Chilean political film directed by Pablo Larrain.  No is a historical reenactment, using actual footage from the time period, of the 1988 political campaign to unseat the resident dictator, Augusto Pinochet.  Under international pressure to legitimize his rule, Pinochet agreed to a public referendum — yes or no — to determine whether he would remain in office.  Television campaigning for the referendum was limited to just fifteen minutes per day for each side, for the twenty-seven days leading up to the referendum.

Larrain’s film spotlights the advertising people who were recruited on both sides of the issue to use their powers of persuasion.  As fate would have it, the young media-savvy consultant to the NO vote (Gael Garcia Bernal) happened to be a partner in an ad firm with the older, conservative consultant for the YES vote (Alfredo Castro). Their uneasy rivalry severely tests the partnership as they continue creating ad campaigns for commercial products — yet that is what sets the tone for the entire story.  The fact that two men with diametrically opposed political views can and do continue to work together, however testily or suspiciously, is, I believe, the moral point of the movie.  Violence need not occur; relationships can overcome political or philosophical differences.  This message is hugely important, and well dramatized.

The movie is not exactly exciting by Hollywood standards.  Much of its running time is spent on the ads themselves, and the creative process behind them.  We see how the ads are imagined and produced, and how each side strategically maneuvers to counter the ads of the other side.  Students of marketing and political science have a bevy of material to sift through.  What is missing, in my view, is an exploration of why the NO campaign was successful.  I’m not a sociologist, and I tend to discount the notion that advertising is as powerful as it is widely considered to be.  I dislike advertising for the most part, in fact, and this movie left me wanting to understand just why people responded to the rainbow-colored “Happiness is coming, Chile” ads that ran Pinochet out of office.  Obviously the campaign worked, but I don’t feel as though I understand why it did.

I do, however, love the Chilean concept of specifically limiting the glut of televised political propaganda to just one-half hour per day for less than a month.  It wouldn’t lead to voters being more informed, but it would take much of the bombast off the airwaves, and that, in my view, would be a good thing.

The story also ends anticlimactically, with little fanfare.  A Hollywood team would never have concluded it in this way — but that’s okay.  It’s good for American viewers to see that other cultures need not build an artificial crescendo to end their movies on high notes.  Pablo Larrain’s film is a solid, rather quiet study of how ordinary people taking small steps can lead to big, important accomplishments.  It eschews flash and flamboyance in favor of focused storytelling and realism.  ☆ ☆ ☆.  23 March 2013.