'Neruda is a Nerudean story overlapping with a Borgesian process'

Chilean film director Pablo Larraín talks in the new issue of Film Comment about making "anti-bio" Neruda and Jackie back-to-back. "I was going to say, Neruda really isn’t about Neruda," says José Teodoro. "It’s about the Nerudian," replies Larraín. More on that:

...Neruda was a lover of food, a great cook, an expert on wine. He travelled the world collecting things. He was a lover of women, a communist, a politician, a senator, and the most amazing writer of our language. How do you depict such a man? We found out about this period when he escaped from the cops. Yes! So we bring the cop into the story and develop the script around him. But this was going to be a big movie for the Latin American reality. Big budget. It was delayed because we had to wait for Gael. It was also a five-country coproduction, so it took some time. At a certain point I realize it’s going to be another eight months before we can get started and I’m unemployed. What am I going to do? I can’t just go home and cut flowers, though I love to do that. So I do a theatre play, and I get this idea. My brother says, “When do you want to shoot it? After Neruda?” I say, “No. I want to shoot it now. I want to write it and go into pre-production in three weeks.” So we write the movie, me and Guillermo Calderón, who wrote Neruda, and Daniel Villalobos, a film critic and novelist, in three weeks, then shoot it in two and a half weeks. In a month and a half we have material for a movie. That was The Club.

What's interesting is how the two films intersect:

...I’m sure it’s not lost on you that your first non-Chilean film is being made by the country—is about the country—that looms in the periphery of your previous films, the same country that backed the communist purge from which Neruda runs, that backed the coup that ushered in the Pinochet era depicted in Tony Manero, Post Mortem and No.

It’s the country that keeps sticking its nose in my country, man.

In Neruda, the titular character is portrayed quite irreverently…

We don’t build monuments, man.

…while Jackie strikes me as quite reverent toward its titular character and the singular situation she finds herself in.

Ah. I see. This is interesting, what you’re saying. But it’s different for me. If you look at my previous movies, you’ll notice that all of them are focused on male characters. With this one I have to contend with, not just a woman, but Jackie Kennedy! A former First Lady! I had to find a different path. I needed to find a new way to look at her. I’m not American. I would never have American patriotism. I only have patriotism for my country, my people. I regard the American flag the same way I regard the flag from China of France.

Later, the Neruda water:

Watching Neruda reminds us that there was a time when writers and artists actually held a profound influence. At least enough influence to be considered a threat to the establishment.

I know. It’s strange to think of it. Neruda’s particular power came from how he was able to describe our country, our society, our people in a way that no historian or journalist has ever done. If you want to understand who we really are, read Neruda. Neruda is in our water. He’s everywhere. That’s why instead of dealing with his poetry we chose to absorb the poetry and see what comes out after. Neruda is what transpires after drinking that Neruda water.

Yet I don’t think the literary precedents for the film’s story lie in Neruda but, rather, in the work of other Latin American authors.

You know Jorge Luis Borges?

You took the words out of my mouth. The detective’s journey feels Borgesian.

Borges had an idea of overlapping fictions. Neruda is a Nerudean story overlapping with a Borgesian process...

The rest of this great interview can be read at Film Comment.