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Simply fantastic!  That's pretty much all that needs to be said about "No."  I can't possibly encourage folks to watch this enough.

 

"No" is one of last year's Academy Award nominees for Best Foreign Film.  It's a Chilean film about a man who heads a marketing campaign to get his countrymen to vote the dictator Augusto Pinochet out of office.  The marketing team takes the position of "No, to Pinochet" ("no" being an inherently negative word) and Pinochet's history of brutality and oppression, and they turn it into a campaign of positivity.  They turn away from the dreary world they live in and focus on the optimism of what a Chile without Pinochet could be.

 

Looking at "No" through the lens of the past few elections, this movie becomes a look at what politics could and should be.  Who needs all the mud slinging and negativity?  Why not focus on the glorious future ahead?

 

Gael Garcia Bernal is fantastic (of course) in his role.  He has a way with emoting.  You feel everything right along with him, which is impressive considering the way "No" is filmed.

 

"No" is made to look as if it was filmed on Betamax.  And then watching that Betamax on broadcast television.  In Latin America.  In the 80s.  That kinda sounds awful when I describe it, but it creates an incredibly immersive experience.  The technique is flawless.  The image is square.  The camera is handheld.  The detail is soft and the colors are slightly separated like the red, cyan, yellow separation in an old color TV.  The English subtitles are even black outlined yellow letters (the preferred coloring in South America.  North America prefers black outlined white letters).  It all comes together to create an incredible documentary feel to the movie.  As a bonus, it's a movie that will look way better on your TV than it would in theaters.

 

This is by far the best movie I've seen in awhile.  Please, please, please go check this out.  I already want to watch it again.

 

9 out of 10