El Conde (2023)★ 6.3/10

Not a thriller, but it's highly amusing. It's like "Nazi Literature in the Americas" with a twist. The logic of dictatorship is much like a vampire biting people: everyone is afraid of vampires, but they also secretly wish to gain immortality and the ability to fly after being bitten. Making Margaret Thatcher a vampire is a very Latin American move. It's a scathing critique of those oppressors who pretend to be champions of democracy. The most brilliant part is at the end: they all fail to realize that Pinochet's most valuable treasures are the manuscripts he has collected—Napoleon's letters, Darwin's diaries... This is a sharp commentary on the cultural industry. The director's creativity and biting commentary are on full display.

Poetic, eerie, and ironic. No wonder the number of nominations for its cinematography, Edward Lachman beautifully conveys the essence of the vampiric realm through a stunning b&w aesthetic with some magnific gothic undertones.

What would happen if a dictator turned into a vampire? He would spread his dictatorial ideas by sucking blood, group people by the taste of their blood, and rely on his desire for evil to survive! The ultimate mockery and black humor, super avant-garde creativity, coupled with the monochrome image add to the magical fantasy, bringing viewers constant surprises throughout the film. Directly turning Thatcher into the mother of vampires, and Pinochet into Thatcher's son, is a bold and powerful move.

The black and white images is the most exquisite part in my opinion. The satire on the neglect of the cultural industry is blunt but humorous and dark enough. The cinematography is really beautiful, and the director's superb at playing with light and contrast. It's common to see dictators portrayed as vampires, but this is the first time it's been done so realistically. The nuns turning into vampires at the dance was a real shocker. While history shouldn't be subject to random creative revision, it's all too common for the world's history to be tampered with, and we shouldn't be silent about our absurd and dark past. The truth is that no matter when or where, we are still living in an environment like the past, so when does it end? Hopefully there is an end.

Staggering in the wilderness, but swift in the air. A senseless carnage filled with decay and ignorance. The director showcases his ambition, all sharpness and lashings, fabricating a wonderful satire of fantasical history.

I get the point, but it's too lyrical and without impact.

Extreme narcissism and extreme creationism (positive); the right paradigm for violently twisting and reshaping characters. Not forgetting the eloquent political humor while ensuring characters remaining identifiable and rewriting stereotypes. All the wonderfully fantastical violent elements make up a movie with political satire and extreme parody. A true fantasy-black humor film.

The overly vague points and absent arguments are irritating and tiresome. The downgrading to vampirism, and the upgrading to remove Satan are also reduced to a crude pretense. The only perceptible thing is the ending, which enters the present day and restores color images, as well as the hidden critique of the city's nighttime landscape beneath it when in flight, and the thought-provoking (but still unclear) parallelism of France and England. The lack of tension in family conflicts and love entanglements, the overused wide shots, the spectacular and detached portrayal of bloodthirsty cannibalism make it hard to see any depth beneath the outwardly fancy gimmick, and the final attempt at closure can only be described as a ham-fisted farce.

Best Screenplay! The more I watch it, the more it's worth it. It uses fantasy to narrate a nation's governmetal change and dark humor tp discuss the absurdity and greed of the human society. Vampires and ordinary people actually become two different classes, and when Margaret Thatcher appeared, I really couldn't help but laugh!

This Chilean director's reconstruction of the history and the future of his native land, the mocking transformation of the dictator into a vampire, the satirical and darkly humorous plot, the setting and the historical context, and the blunt and comedic way he expresses himself can be an expression technique in the new age. However, it’s still lacking, and the climax at the end even requires bringing in the mother of all vampires to control the scene. The descendants instead are written better - as inheritors of the previous generation and not understanding that cultural history is the most valuable, they yearn to kill their father to obtain wealth, truly behaving like vampires.

The movie is warmly satirical, and while it never skimps on the prop blood, there are hardly any moments that really pierce through the characters. Pablo Larraín’s better works would’ve been his other two films which sculpt and defines femininity, though he's clearly more enamored with Chilean history.

The distillation of history can be applied to any political context. The appropriation of classic images exacerbates the hollowness of the characters, and Pablo Larraín takes a step closer to vulgarized writing that pretends to be critical, artistic, and humorous.