Pablo Larraín
El Conde

Presented at the last Venice Film Festival and released on Netflix on September 15th, the latest film by Chilean director Pablo Larrain arrives at just the right time, coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of Pinochet's military coup in September 1973 against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. The historical facts are well known and it is right to remember them, even though the film did not seem fully successful to me.

The start of the plot is certainly promising, as the author imagines (the power of artistic fiction) that Pinochet is nothing more than a vampire, born an orphan in pre-revolutionary eighteenth-century France with the name Pinoche. When faced with the tremendous events of the 1789 revolution, the protagonist develops an instinctive aversion to everything that constitutes renewal at the expense of the established order and then, given his propensity to vampirize others, he has the opportunity to traverse various historical eras until he finds himself in twentieth-century Chile, distinguishing himself, as is well known, as a Chilean army general and ruthless dictator from 1973 onward.

Obviously, even though he was no longer head of the military junta after the 1988 institutional referendum in which the majority of Chilean voters opposed the renewal of his presidency, General Pinochet enjoys significant economic wealth scattered in numerous offshore bank accounts, allowing him to live comfortably while benefiting his rather greedy relatives. But he is still a vampire, that is, an undead, and must suck blood, albeit feeling bored with his condition, whereas the family members would very much like him to die to share the money.

The plot, however, as presented in the film, becomes quite tangled with the entry of certain characters not effectively defined, which weigh down the pace. Apart from the presence of Pinochet's faithful servant, who is also a vampire, at one point one of the general's daughters calls an exorcist nun who is supposed to rid the august father of the demon. Not only that: the aforementioned sister reveals herself to be an attentive accounting detective of the Pinochet family's illicit financial fortunes, and needless to say, these characteristics of the nun appear at the very least very fanciful. The finale of the entire plot will be marked by a certain pessimism from the director regarding the possibility that Evil will pay for the misdeeds committed in the past.

Credit must be given to the director for creating a gothic and dark fable, immersed in a somber black and white that generates anxiety, utilizing the notable performance of Jamie Vadell as General Pinochet. What, in my opinion, is not convincing is not just a plot overcrowded with characters that weigh down the storyline. I would say primarily that a historical figure like Pinochet (as a perfect dictator like many of his predecessors and successors) has no metaphysical or fantastic characteristics whatsoever. Unlike so-called vampires, creatures imagined by certain old popular beliefs, tyrants do not indulge in the luxury of sleeping by day and acting by night, but are always active. They do not have a possible magnetic aura that would make them perversely fascinating. Rather, as Hannah Arendt knew how to describe them in "The Banality of Evil," they are people so petty, narrow-minded, opaque, and gray that they almost go unnoticed, were it not for the power role they occupy. This applies not only to the Nazi executioner Eichmann but to all past, present, and (alas) future despots. United by the inability to admit their own faults in the name of misguided beliefs, ready to justify themselves by saying they were following orders, or shifting blame onto loyal collaborators.

Who knows, perhaps this latter would have been a defensive thesis put forward by Pinochet if he had gone to trial for the crimes he orchestrated. But he died prematurely and if earthly justice did not sanction him, one might wonder how any possible divine justice might proceed (assuming and not conceding that there could be a divine judgment...). We mortals have nothing else left but, perhaps, the commitment not to forget the Evil perpetrated everywhere and the commitment to make, in our small way, civil society better.