Just got back from seeing this movie, and there was one thing I didn't understand: why was it that from the moment the results of the referendum were read out to the moment the credits rolled, Rene looked so gloomy? I wasn't sure how to feel during the last few minutes because of it.
shareGood question. I too was wondering the same thing. I wish someone would hurry up and chime in on this, but until they do, here's my theory.
If you remember, there was a point early on in the film where he says to his girlfriend that his son doesn't understand the levity of the situation and that, paraphrasing here, "I don't really understand it either". I took that to mean that although he knew the current dictatorship was awful, he also was skeptical and might have thought that Chile, under a new rule, would still have its share of problems.
or
He's just exhausted, having lived in fear for the past month while working long hours on perhaps the singular most important ad campaign of his life.
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I think he was just a little bit NUMB -- like when you graduate high school...it feels sort of "good" but at the same time doesn't seem "real."
shareI believe that the film's very last scene displayed saavedra's ambiguity regarding chile's post "no" reality. One senses that he's not convinced that the commercial for the soap opera contextuality conveys chile's post "no" reality; he's simply helped create a clever commercial for a crass soap opera. If anything the pre-no commercial shown at the beginning of the film -- for the "free" soda pop -- better contextualizes the burgeoning sense of freedom percolating in the country. Perhaps saavedra felt directionless and without a creative edge in post "no" Chile. Wonderful film.
NV
A few things:
I think you meant "gravity" of the situation, not "levity."
I don't personally see either of your interpretations nor the two replies you've gotten so far as being the best understanding of René's state of mind at the film's end.
When we first met him, he was not very political, at all, which means he also had been living rather blithely tuned out to the horrors of the dictatorship and rather sheltered from those realities (something his pro-Pinochet boss would have been happy to encourage). His 'conversion' to the opposition is initially tentative and then eventually full-fledged as he immerses himself and becomes passionate about his creative direction of the No campaign, putting his and his son's life in danger. Suddenly and increasingly, he comes face to face with the terror of a reality under Pinochet he'd been blind to and in some degree of denial about. Meanwhile we see his semi-estranged wife and mother of his son repeatedly arrested by police and beaten up for her own activism against Pinochet, once right near the beginning of the film, suggesting that she's been far more politically aware and fighting for democracy while René had been so naive, disinterested, and/or focused on professional ambitions that their marital separation may plausibly have resulted from this significant divergence in their world views and priorities prior to the film's storytime. Thus, what we witness as the 'arc' René goes through is a kind of belated but intense wakeup from something of a political stupor he'd been in, possibly even ignorant of how much risk his wife had been in far longer than he has. But now he's gotten a major taste of living under threat and violence and coercion. His son was in danger that even at the time of her final arrest, his wife seems to comprehend more viscerally than he does.
So, once the election results are in and the campaign is over and his adrenalin flow can recede, I believe he is in a shellshock reckoning of just how much peril he and his country had been in beyond what he'd ever allowed himself to recognize ... Yes, they've won the plebiscite, but now he finally has come to realize just how much was at stake and is 'staggered' by it all, clutching his son all the more and as if in the wake of a life-threatening natural disaster, which indeed they barely escaped by winning an election no one thought they realistically could win.
He was bewildered. Throughout the campaign he was locked into work mode and didn't have the same feeling for the events during the campaign. His exile as a child, returning as an adult to Chile, is pivotal to his character and the plot and is referred to throughout the film by lots of different characters.
In those last few minutes his bewilderment subsides and he smiles as he begins to realise, perhaps for the first time, that he has been part of something momentous. It's one of my favourite scenes in the film and one where I felt most connected with Saavedra, the outsider who is also inextricably linked.
Away with the manners of withered virginsshare
The film is a little anti-capitalist. Our hero is alienated from life due to his capitalistic view on things. With this project where there is no profit motive he becomes more humanized, and this ultimately at the end changes him and influences how he does his job.
The ending shows them interviewing one of the Bella actresses, putting a face and character on what appears on the surface to just be a show about glamour and riches.
I was wondering about that too. I think Slant Magazine's review explained it pretty well:
"Though unwaveringly devoted to his endpoint, René, whose every move rings true in Bernal's control, begins his "No" campaign gig as a seemingly unfazed salesman, believing in the cause in the same way he might a product in a pitch meeting. By the end, he's walking amid the pro-"No" revelers like a shell-shocked convert, on the verge of tears while processing the fact that he essentially just spearheaded Pinochet's unseating."
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good one.
A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.
I think he was overwhelmed by the moment, or numb. Like everything for a moment was unreal. I think the character may have felt this way.
I did. Back in 1988.
Don't forget René was the son of an "exiliado" (political exiled?), so his feelings was probably a mix of happiness, confussion and uncertainty.
Please excuse my terrible redaction, english is not my native language IMDb = Catch-22
Just throwing this out there regarding the ending scene if anyone is interested. It refers to a burlesque dancer turned actress. The movie prior to "No" that was directed by Pablo Larrain, "Post Mortem", was about a burlesque dancer gone missing in Chile..
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