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Senador: I'm talking to you, sir!
Pablo Neruda: I'm listening, Senator.
Senador: Are you Neruda or aren't you?
Pablo Neruda: I am.
Senador: Good, because two months ago your name was Ricardo Reyes. Why did you change your name? Did you steal something?
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Pablo Neruda: [discussing President Videla with his fellow Senators] We all elected him, Senator. Regrettably, we all did. All of us idiots in this room elected him.
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Óscar Peluchonneau: [voiceover about the intellectual leftist party guests at the Neruda house] They don't know what it is to sleep on the floor. But they're all reds. If we had a Bolshevik revolution, they would be the first to run away.
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Óscar Peluchonneau: [voiceover about the Nerudas] And his wife. I don't get her. An Argentinian aristocrat educated in Paris, who wound up tutoring this railway worker's son.
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Óscar Peluchonneau: [voiceover about Neruda] Many women must imagine he makes love with a rose in his teeth. And that after kissing them, he runs off to write new love poems, inspired by them. He's the king of love.
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Óscar Peluchonneau: [voiceover] People say Chile is an island and that the Andes are like a second sea. A gigantic wave that never breaks. On the other side there's a strange flat land called Argentina.
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Escolta en frontera Argentina: If you have two names, you can't leave the country.
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Pablo Neruda: [voice-over, reading inscription in paperback novel left for his pursuer] Rise and be born with me, policeman brother.
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Óscar Peluchonneau: [voiceover about the Pisagua concentration camp] I even have a truck, and a zoo in the middle of the desert. Those who try to escape turn into pillars of salt. But no one ever escapes, because the prison captain is a blue-eyed fox. His name is Augusto Pinochet.
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Pablo Neruda: Police novels help me forget the police are after me.
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Óscar Peluchonneau: [voiceover while looking at a statue of Olivier Peluchonneau in police headquarters] Thanks, Dad.
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Óscar Peluchonneau: [to Delia] I'm not a supporting character.
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Óscar Peluchonneau: [into microphone during a national radio broadcast] Hello Chile. The poet is a public menace, and an unforgettable lover.
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Álvaro Jara: What you want is a great escape. Yes?
Pablo Neruda: I won't play the fascists' game. I'll become their worst nightmare. In order to do that, I need to be a popular giant.
Álvaro Jara: You can't do that.
Pablo Neruda: I already have.
Álvaro Jara: No, you can't. People would say you used this persecution to become a saint. That we were never actually oppressed. That we like to play the victim. That we like to suffer. But they're killing us, for real. Look. I only ask you to be a bit more humble. Good luck on your journey.
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Delia del Carril: [to Neruda] Being with you is beautiful. It's like living on a tree-lined street.
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Pablo Neruda: [to Delia] Little ant, I thought I'd die with you. You've given me everything. Without you, I wouldn't be me.
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Óscar Peluchonneau: [voiceover] The poet gave them words to tell about their lives. Their harsh lives. And these words gave meaning to their nightmares. That's why he did it. To give them a voice. They will quote him each time history tramples them. They don't remember the love poems. They remember the poems of rage. Unrecognizable poems. Poems of an imaginary future.
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Gabriel González Videla: [describing Neruda to his staff] During my campaign, this man would pull a piece of paper out of his pocket and ten thousand workers would go silent to hear him recite poetry in that voice of his.
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Pablo Neruda: To write well, one must know how to erase.
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Óscar Peluchonneau: [voiceover] The poet has the fever of artistic spirits, who tend to think the world is something they imagined.
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Arturo Alessandri: You and your communist comrades were so thirsty for power that you let yourself be fooled by a three-penny populist.
Pablo Neruda: What's wrong with having ambitions of power? It's our turn now. We are entitled to aspire to La Moneda.
Arturo Alessandri: How will you govern?
Pablo Neruda: With a democracy of Soviets of soldiers, workers and peasants.
Arturo Alessandri: God help us all. The palace will be covered in peanut shells and broken bottles. They'll write laws with spelling mistakes.
Pablo Neruda: Perhaps. But the cemeteries won't be filled with executed political prisoners.
Arturo Alessandri: Senator, please.
Pablo Neruda: You think the way to defeat communism is to push us into exile. To put us in jail. But allow me to offer some advice. The solution is to kill us all. Kill us. That will solve your problem.
Arturo Alessandri: Don't say that again. Some may be tempted to try.
Pablo Neruda: Who's going to? You?
Arturo Alessandri: I'll consider it.
Neruda Quotes
Extended Reading
Director: Pablo Larraín
Language: Spanish,French,Dutch,Mapudungun Release date: August 11, 2016