Post Mortem
Written Directed By: Pablo
Larraín
Starring: Alfredo
Castro, Antonia Zegers, Amparo Noguera, and Jaime Vadell
Director of Photography: Sergio Armstrong, Editor: Andrea
Chingnoli, Production Designer: Polin Garbizu, Original Music: Joan Cristobal
Meza
The first
few sequences of Post Mortem from
Chilean director Pablo Larraín immediately invite us into a cryptic world that
controls us from the opening shot. We follow Mario, a middle-aged, very quiet and
very repressed man, as he stands inside his home. Looking out his window, he
spies on his neighbor, a beautiful woman with a boisterous and revealing
posture. He follows her to a burlesque show, and then down into the lair
underneath the stage to where she lays, where he overhears some dialogue that
suggests she may also be a prostitute. He asks if he can drive her home, which
she accepts. Why does he do this? Larraín’s camera remains almost still, with
composed and exacting shots that keep us focused without revealing any sort of
inner detail.
In many
ways, I wished that the rest of Post
Mortem would then fill in those details, which ends up being a very puzzling
film that mixes the psychological and political. I missed Larraín’s first film,
Tony Manero, which followed a killer
who dressed up as the Travolta character from Saturday Night Fever. And Post
Mortem has a lot to say about Chilean psychology and history, though
perhaps it is more aimed at audiences who know more about the uprising that led
to Pinochet’s violent and brutal dictatorship. But for audiences (like myself)
who go in blind, Larraín certainly has a very unique voice that makes Post Mortem still an interesting look
into this confusing and devastating world.
When he’s
not ogling over the delectable prostitute-dancer Nancy, Mario works as a typist
for a morgue in Santiago. With deadpan humor, Larraín shows the process as he
and his colleagues tear open a body with prickly sounds that made my shoulders
twitch. Mario seems ambivalent to the dead around him, even when the bodies
begin to pile up as the 1973 revolution begins. He’s more interested in Nancy,
inviting her over for dinner while political rebels discuss their plan of
action across the street. At the dinner table, Nancy begins silently crying,
and then can’t control herself. Mario joins in the wailing, perhaps out of
solidarity, or his own strange, unexplained impulses. This is of course
followed by sex. Larraín never bothers to explain the actions behind these, or
if he does, they are almost too cryptic to pick up on a first viewing. Mario is
repressed, but he makes Brandon’s impulses from Shame seem almost natural and casual.
I
understand Larraín isn’t interested in foregrounding his politics, but the
sequences at the morgue as the political chaos builds are the most accessible
and fascinating. In one of the oddest moments, Mario drags a cart of bodies
into the morgue, and one of them slips off. Left in a Kafkaesque moment, only
he can pick up the nameless body and throw it back on the cart. These moments
of brutal violence marked by dark humor show off Larraín’s strength, as his
camera remains as silent and still as ever, never giving the film a dramatic
boost. In a sly move, Mario observes another colleague screaming at the madness
and absurdity of the violence around them. But Mario remains silent, almost
perplexed by what could be the issue.
But Post Mortem never spends too much time
on this narrative, and returns to the story of Mario and Nancy, which does end
with a climatic and brutally frightening long take that once again blends the
line of comedy and tragedy. Even if I didn’t like Post Mortem, it marks the note that Larraín is a force to be
reckoned with, a director with a keen eye, an austere filmmaking style, and a
knack for the comically morose.
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