Neruda

This is a film of glacial beauty, of a noir-like detective who should be evil, hunting down a poet of the revolution through Chilean towns and villages into the snow drifts of the Andes.

The detective though, is barely one at all, toyed with by the poet, Neruda, to the point where he questions his own existence, or whether he's just a character in a story. The film has this kind of mood; there is a scene towards the end as the detective's lying in the snow, staring into the dusk, he's bleeding and with a poet's words on his mind. It is one of the most poetic moments I have ever seen on celluloid, or anywhere.

I loved this film and it made me realize more than ever that films that are labelled 'transgender' are often not about being transgender at all. Then I watched Neruda, and watched a detective questioning his own existence, his raison d'etre doomed to die like him in the most beautiful surroundings, but to see him lying there, I thought: it was worth the hunt and the chase to have this moment, to be this moment.

I can't remember the last time I left the cinema wanting to see the film again. Neruda is so beautifully put together, however, the protagonists so illustrative of a poetic spirit of life and of being alive even in the face of death that it doesn't matter, that I want to watch this film again. It's a film that makes you want that moment in the Andean mountains, dying as you face the stars, a character in poetry.