EL CONDE - Mark Reviews Movies

El Conde, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 7, 2023

Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín was born into a country under the rule of a ruthless dictator, and El Conde allows the co-writer/director to say what needs to be said about Augusto Pinochet in the most blatant yet fantastical way possible. Pinochet, whose nearly two-decade rule led to the imprisonment and torture and killing of political opponents, is not merely a brutal authoritarian in this film. No, the man is literally an inhuman monster—a vampire, to be more specific—who refuses to die, because there's still the possibility that he might find a way to rise to power again.

One could—and maybe should—make the argument that perceiving or transforming historical figures like Pinochet into such a foul creature is to undermine the atrocities such people commit. It's letting them off easy, in a way, because there is nothing else we should expect of a murderous monster.

The fact that Pinochet and other dictators of his ilk are human is what's terrifying. Given certain experiences and ways of thinking, anyone might become someone like this man, whose reign of terror still haunts Chile in some way (This film, some of Larraín's previous ones, and others coming out of the country basically prove that), or, more likely, find oneself supporting someone like him. For the one person we see spit on the former ruler's glass-encased casket, there are dozens more grieving his death and saluting his corpse, after all.

Of course, it's not a corpse on display in Larraín's re-creation of this event. The Pinochet of this film, referred to as "the Count" and played by Jaime Vadell, isn't exactly immortal, but he's close enough to it for such an ordinary fate, dying of a heart attack at his wife's birthday party in 2006, to be unlikely. The Count is just playing dead in this story, which then follows him in hiding, as he and his family and his closest confidants try to figure out what kind of life, if any, still exists for him and what legacy he will leave behind when he finally does die.

This means the entire narrative exists within a bubble of those who know, once loved or still love, and respect the Count. From their perspective, this story is the romantic tragedy of man destined for power but whose alleged right to it was taken away from him by an ungrateful segment of the population (Edward Lachman's black-and-white cinematography evokes, not only an old-fashioned monster movie, but also a prestigious historical drama). It's a fairy tale, basically, narrated by the voice of an English woman (whose identity is a tantalizing mystery, until the revelation of it becomes a pointed, reality-based condemnation that will make all the right people angry for reasons they'll certainly fail to justify).

As such, the narration is filled with glowing descriptions of Pinochet's leadership, government, and fight against revolutionaries and leftists—a philosophy that came to the Count after witnessing the French Revolution as a solider who deserted, as soon as he saw the way the political tide was turning. It's also a lamentation for the Count's current state—weak, regularly donning a robe or track suit, wanting to actually die—while living in secrecy in one of the internment camps his administration established.

Obviously, this is far from Larraín's view of Pinochet, either as a real person or as the fictional monster into which the filmmaker has turned him. Beyond the repeated reminders of how the dictator ruined so many lives and syphoned money from the government to fill his own bank accounts, the evidence, of course, is the simple fact that Larraín has transformed Pinochet into a vampire, who feeds on the blood and pulverized-in-a-blender hearts of unsuspecting victims.

The result is a fascinating kind of cognitive dissonance throughout the film, and that sense elevates what is inherently a fairly straightforward satire. The joke isn't simply that Pinochet is a literal monster, flying around Chilean cities and the countryside in his full military uniform on the hunt for blood.

This story exists firmly within the isolated and insulated world of the Count, his scheming wife Lucía (Gloria Münchmeyer), his inheritance-focused adult children, and his true-believer butler/retired torturer Fyodor (Alfredo Castro). Larraín and co-screenwriter Guillermo Calderón prop up these characters by giving them everything—unnatural and earthly power in vampirism and wealth beyond imagination—so they can better knock them down as the plot unfolds.

The plot itself has to do with the Count's apparent return to killing and drinking blood, despite his proclaimed desire to die. That prompts his children to stage a sort of intervention and an exorcist nun named Carmencita (Paula Luschsinger) to pretend to be an accountant, with the real goal of casting out whatever demon or devil might be in the Count from his body to save his mortal soul—if the monster has or ever had one in the first place.

If all of that sounds absurd and stylized, it is, but the heightened approach and initial sense of empowerment for these characters are the qualities that make the main joke work. All of these characters—from the Count to everyone within his inner circle—reveal themselves to be little more than petty, greedy, and two-faced people. Presented with such unimaginable power and money and legal invulnerability, they squabble and bicker and conspire in a way that shows how little they are within the fictionally grand and authentically horrific history in which they exist.

Is that observation also a bit on-the-nose? It is, perhaps, but some things need to be said and said again—especially when it comes to someone whose legacy is somehow a matter of controversy, instead of a self-apparent stain. El Conde says it with style, cleverness, an assurance of tone, and, of course, a notably bizarre story.

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