Larraín mixes historical fact with diabolically funny fiction: Gael García Bernal plays a self-important and dim-witted police inspector who leads the charge to track down the elusive Neruda (Luis Gnecco), getting into Peter Sellers–worthy scrapes along the way.
But if you’re going to watch one Larraín-directed almost-but-not-quite historical biopic this year, make it Neruda, his cerebral yet humane portrait of his country’s beloved national poet, who was forced to go into hiding after voicing support for the Communist Party in the late 1940s. Well, don’t forget it entirely-it’s a good if not great movie whose success in awards season would bring some long-deserved attention to its remarkable director, a native of Chile. Even the romantic comedies on this list-of which there are a few, including one musical-aren’t without shadows: For all their effervescence, The Edge of Seventeen, Love and Friendship, and La La Land take place against a backdrop of grief, disappointment, loneliness, and loss. So, this list is probably a few shades darker than it would have been had the election results been different on Nov. After one bad breakup in my 20s I went on an extended Ingmar Bergman binge that was the VHS-era equivalent of a medieval purification rite. Escapism and fantasy-much as I respect and love both as movie-going modes-somehow require more emotional lightness and receptivity to pleasure than I can summon in moments of pain. In times of deep trouble, I tend to reach for troubled and troubling art. Shortly after the election in November, I spoke on the Slate Culture Gabfest about treating sadness with homeopathic cultural remedies.
And then the political pillars started collapsing too: Oh shit, Brexit? AYFKM, Trump? Prince? You expect us to somehow continue American pop music without Prince? Oh God, Gene Wilder. 2016 was a year when the pillars that used to hold up our shared cultural universe wouldn’t stop crumbling around us.
Early in January, David Bowie died, and then Alan Rickman four days later, and those twin losses now seem like the double toll of a warning bell whose somber echo would resonate through the year.
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