Will Sorg-

Augusto Pinochet was a monster. Propped up by the CIA and the Chilean military, Pinochet was the dictator of Chile for almost 20 years. In that time he oversaw murders, tortures, assassinations and so much corruption that he was said to have stolen over $26 million of his people’s money. Chile eventually managed to oust Pinochet and established a non-dictatorial government, Pinochet died in 2006 at the age of 91, having never faced a single day of jail time for his crimes. El Conde (The Count) imagines a world where Pinochet is not just a metaphorical monster, but a real, bloodsucking, undying vampire.

Pablo Larraín, the director of El Conde, is a Chilean filmmaker who is very familiar with fictionalized biopics. Larraín was first recognized internationally for NO, a film about the vote that took Pinochet out of power. He later made his English language debut with Jackie which follows Jackie Kennedy immediately after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Larraín’s previous film before El Conde was Spencer, which portrays Princess Diana in the midst of her tumultuous marriage to Prince Charles. Although the only Larraín film I have seen before El Conde is Spencer, if those two films are anything to go on, then the career of Larraín has clearly shifted toward the exploration of history and historical figures through an abstraction of fictionalized events.

Pinochet is not 91 years old in the film. Instead, he is over 200 years old and has been around since the French Revolution. A majority of the film takes place in a secret mansion owned by Pinochet as he tries to decide what to do next after his time as dictator ended with failure. He is an ill-tempered, uninteresting, pseudo-intellectual francophile who hates his children and thinks only of himself. This is likely a very accurate portrayal of Pinochet minus the vampirism. Perhaps the most interesting part of the film is the way that Pinochet’s family is portrayed. He has not turned a single one of his children or even his wife into a vampire. The only person he ever has bestowed the power to is his butler. The film has essentially no likable characters as each of his children, his wife, and even the seemingly normal financial assistant who they bring in to reclaim Pinochet’s money are just as vapid and empty as the former general himself. This portrayal of Pinochet further emphasizes the pointlessness of his real-life cruelty. Here he has the absolute power of immortality, yet like most authoritarians, he lacks imagination and empathy so it goes completely to waste. He does not share vampirism with his family out of selfishness and contempt that they are not supposedly as competent as him. He doesn’t use his vampirism to pursue any great goal, he doesn’t even seek more power anymore. Even the most pathetic vampire in most media seeks out blood and terrorizes the countryside, but Pinochet doesn’t even fulfill the tropes of his own archetype. Rather, he sits around his house waiting for someone to kill him. A complete husk of a person melded with a sad imitation of a famous monster. It is a great twist on the idea of the vampire being a symbol of the ruling class as it shows the ruling class in utter decline, so ineffectual that all it can be is a drain on resources.

Still, this does not make for an entirely enjoyable experience. The story itself oscillates from remarkably predictable to wildly nonsensical with plenty of cheap twists and a deeply unsatisfying ending. The acting is serviceable but the characters are so muted and unremarkable that it feels like the actors were barely given anything to work with. The film has great ideas but so many of them are executed in the least exciting way possible. Perhaps the biggest sin is that the film does not respect the audience’s intelligence. Despite this being an arthouse vampire movie about a Chilean dictator, the filmmakers seem to believe the audience doesn’t have the attention span nor the intelligence to piece together thematic and symbolic elements. So much of the film is a heavy-handed explanation of what the movie is about that you really come away from the film with a feeling that you’ve been lectured at for an hour and forty minutes. Also, it is a remarkably dull movie for a film that features several decapitations.

What saves this movie, for me, is the technical prowess. This movie looks absolutely stunning. It might be one of the best-looking movies of this year, the black and white cinematography perfectly imitating the old Dracula films from the early to mid 20th century, and the set and costume design immaculate. There is a haunting beauty that makes everything about this film a little better. For each boring scene, there is a rapturous transitional period where no dialogue happens and the viewer is able to take in the visual language of the film. Easily the best parts of the film are the moments where Pinochet begins to fly. He soars above city skylines or mountains as the incredible musical score and stunning cinematography adds a layer to the uncanny scene. It brings to mind an unsettling thought: that unless we are careful, monsters like Pinochet will come back. With a different name and a different country, authoritarianism will always be able to come back.