Building A Positive Future Trumps Chilean Dictatorship

As a marketing professional, I'm particularly interested in the Spanish-language film No directed by Chilean director Pablo Larrain. Like Argo, the film is based on history, albeit an overdramatization of what happened during the 1988 plebiscite. The premise of the film is very simple - an advertising executive devised and implemented a campaign to defeat Augusto Pinochet in Chile's 1988 referendum peacefully after 15 years of dictatorship.

The film was nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at this year's Oscars but lost to the French movie Amour. Its simplicity drew many criticisms, but I think it's the simplicity that resulted in a nomination. The ad campaign drives home a direct message: both politics and marketing are built on dreams of the future. Pinochet's camp and its Yes marketing team didn't get that and underestimated the opposition. General Pinochet's administration further tried to suppress and intimidate the No team with oppressive moves.

The movie was filmed video-style to give an impression of a documentary-like cinema piece in the 80s. Of course, we all understand that it took more than an advertising campaign to overthrow the Pinochet autocracy, but the message of a happy and promising future free of dictatorship was too irresistible for Chileans. Yes, the ad campaign might be tacky and plagiaristic at times, but the marketing goal was ultimately achieved.

The film is successful because it's serious and funny at the same time. We see the real footage of the oppression and the intimidation. At the same time, we also see the strengths and weaknesses of what marketing can and cannot do. We also witness the power of third-party endorsement when real footage of Hollywood celebrities showed their support for the No campaign - Superman Christopher Reeve, Jane Fonda in her activist mode, and Richard Dreyfuss expressing his support on TV in Spanish. 

But the film's success is largely attributed to its lead actor, Mexican superstar Gael Garcia Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries), who's renowned not only for his acting talent, but also for his choice of roles. Bernal expressed in fluent English in a London TV interview that politics is very much part of everyday life in Latin America, and this became the essence of the movie No. Even though he started his career as a TV soap opera heartthrob in Mexico, Bernal became the first Mexican actor to be accepted at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London at the age of 19. His acting is a combination of emotional intensity with the authenticity of an everyday hero. Bernal is a thinking woman's Romeo in Latin America - no wonder Natalie Portman dated him for several years before moving on to others and marrying ballet dancer Benjamin Millepied.

This movie is an intelligent production, but like the Academy Awards jurors, I prefer Amour even more.