“No,” (Chilean, Spanish with Subtitles), April 21, 2013 (2012), theater. Very fine film about the ‘campaign’ to remove Augusto Pinochet as dictator of Chile Rene’ (Gael Garcia Bernal). is hired/recruited to consult/run/be part of the campaign to vote no on the Chilean dictatorship. He’s a young, American-inspired ad man in the age of the weird Coke commercials; you remember, the ones with the mimes?. Old lefties view this as the moment to make the moral case of pain, fear, despair they’ve experienced since Allende. They, and everyone else, know they can’t win. Rene’ suggests a campaign around “happiness” as presented via modern advertising. Ironically, of course, that’s the neo-liberal Chile that does emerge from the vote. The film itself presents powerful components of each as Chilean society comes to a crescendo around this campaign. It also looks at the dictatorship’s struggles to respond–coordinated by Rene’s boss–in a society really split about how to move forward. This is a very sly film that never downplays the Orwellian controls and crude power of the dictatorship. The film is more than the story, and regardless of the campaign, helps you feel connected to the anger, pain, and sense of hopelessness of those who want to use the moment to show what happened to them as well as to Bernal’s protagonist. And, in fact, they do fuse those two visions. Lots of hand-held camera work, bright shots into the sun, and almost sepia or faded Technicolor of a time gone past. I hope the West Newton cinema: 1) cleans the damn floor; 2) gets some new seats.