In No, Gael Garcia Bernal stars as an ad man brainstorming the guerrilla advertising campaign that dethroned Chilean dictator Pinochet in a 1988 plebiscite. It turns out that the key was not to rehash the atrocities of the repressive Pinochet dictatorship, but to get his audience to picture the alternative democratic future. The ad man’s biggest challenge is to pitch his soft sell campaign to Pinochet’s ideologically driven opponents.
No has a grainy look and was shot in the same aspect as is television (i.e., not widescreen). This allows the transition between the filmed scenes and the inserted historical footage (including the original Yes and No campaign commercials) to be seamless.
I visited Chile in the last days of the Pinochet dictatorship, after the October 1988 plebiscite but before the new democratic government took office fifteen months later. No ably captures both the scariness of the authoritarian regime and the culture of the period. As always, Garcia Bernal is excellent. No was nominated for the 2013 Foreign Language Oscar.
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