Neruda

Hail, Emperor Caligula.

Hail.

I would like to welcome the USSR's biggest defender,

but I'd like to know who is this Mr. Neruda?

He speaks of peace,

yet he supports strikers who attack our law enforcement.

I don't know what gives you the right

to insult our president

in the foreign press.

I'm talking to you, sir!

I'm listening, Senator.

- Are you Neruda or aren't you? - I am.

Good, because two months ago, your name was Ricardo Reyes.

Why did you change your name? Did you steal something?

Silence!

How dare you?

It's a question.

Show the senator some respect!

Silence.

The honorable Senator Neruda has the floor.

Thank you very much, Mr. President of this shitty senate.

I would first like to thank the Russian people

for defeating fascism and achieving world peace.

Secondly, I'd like to thank

the Communist Party, my party, for always defending

the rights of workers and of the people,

rights that are being ignored right now.

Union leaders, Communist Party members, are being thrown

in jail by your president.

The traitor González Videla, who sold out to the Northern empire!

You elected him.

We all elected him, Senator. Regrettably, we all did.

All of us idiots in this room elected him.

Excuse me.

It's been only three years since World War II ended

and here, in this happy home,

a fabulous persecution is about to begin.

I've always thought this is how Chilean left-wing elites liked to celebrate

when they're not busy complaining.

Deep down, they're happy. They're in love,

and they love to soak up other people's suffering and sweat.

In this cave, the artists and the intellectuals gather,

those who traveled the world and returned happy.

The advisers.

The lawyers.

Criminals need to surround themselves with men in ties

who went to university to study the art of bureaucratic cheating.

Don Pablo

isn't ready to go yet because he promised to dress up as Lawrence of Arabia,

the desert guerrilla fighter.

And his wife,

I don't get her.

An Argentinian aristocrat educated in Paris,

but she wound up with the son of a laborer.

How do I look?

Unrecognizable.

Silence, please.

Silence!

Thank you.

Next on our program, a surprise from our host.

I give you

the poet Pablo Neruda.

All eyes on him.

All lips.

"Tonight, I can write the saddest lines...

Many want to kiss him.

"Write, for example...

They want to hold his hand.

"The night is starry...

They want to sleep in his bed.

"And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance...

They say he smells of seaweed.

"The night wind revolves In the sky and sings...

The embarrassment of once again repeating the poem from a rural school...

"Tonight I can write the saddest lines...

...written over 20 years ago.

"I loved her

"And sometimes, she loved me, too

"Through nights like this one...

Many women must imagine

he makes love with a rose in his teeth.

"I kissed her so many times under the endless sky...

And that after kissing them,

he runs off to write new love poems, inspired by them.

He's the king of love.

"I loved her, too...

"Tonight, I can write the saddest lines

"To think that I do not have her...

They don't know what it is to sleep on the floor,

but they are all reds.

"To hear the immense night

"Still more immense without her...

If we had a Bolshevik revolution,

they would be the first to run away.

"Like dew upon the grass."

They say that Neruda is the most important communist in the world.

He must firmly believe in unity of workers and peasants,

in the dignity and historical lucidity of the Chilean Bolshevik party.

We'll have some water.

These gentlemen are working.

Just take it away, please.

Thank you.

We've come from an emergency meeting of the Party steering committee.

Enough!

They've sent us here to inform you

that the government is ostracizing union leaders.

They've asked us to inform you that

we're going into hiding.

Me, too?

Yes. You, too.

- No? - No.

I am absolutely certain

that sooner or later,

sooner rather than later,

the unfair political process to which I've been subjected

shall be appropriately judged,

and instigators and perpetrators shall all be called by their name.

Thank you very much.

Silence!

Silence in the room, please.

In Chile, there's no freedom of speech. There's no freedom from terror.

Today, January 6th, 1948,

I'm being persecuted for remaining faithful to lofty human aspirations,

and for the first time, I had to face a tribunal

for reporting despicable violations of those freedoms to the Americas

occurring in the last place on earth I would have wished,

here in Chile.

Why do they do this?

Well, communists hate to work.

They'd rather bum churches.

It makes them feel more alive.

The Chilean aristocracy likes to flaunt its wealth,

but that shouldn't impress the poet.

He's been to Parisian salons,

and this provincial imitation makes him laugh.

Still, he likes it.

Alessandri has been the president of the Republic twice,

and now he's the president of the Senate.

In his desk drawer, there is a key labeled "Chile."

Al'! of us Chileans are merely his servants.

I was with the president of the Republic. He's very sad.

Really? Why?

He says you insulted him with slanderous remarks.

It's possible. My intention has always been to harm him as much as possible.

You should write a book when you get out of jail.

Call it "Prison Poems," or something like that.

That's an awful title, Alessandri. Don't talk about things you don't know.

In politics, insolence is a way of expressing admiration.

I'm asking you to close the Pisagua concentration camp and free my comrades.

Why ask me to do something I don't want to do?

I thought you didn't take orders,

but you're a González Videla lackey.

That language, Senator! That's what gets you in trouble.

Being a communist got me in trouble.

That and inciting union uprisings.

I don't regret that.

What do you regret? Becoming a bourgeois?

I regret I campaigned for a traitor.

Yes, you wrote a poem for him.

That's funny now, isn't it? But during the campaign...

Well, these traitors have their charm, too.

No, I disagree.

You and your communist comrades were so thirsty for power

that you let yourself be fooled by a three-penny populist.

What's wrong with having ambitions of power?

It's our turn now. We are entitled to aspire to La Moneda.

How will you govern?

With a democracy of Soviets,

of soldiers, workers and peasants.

God help us all.

The palace will be covered

in peanut shells and broken bottles.

They'll write laws with spelling mistakes.

Perhaps.

But the cemeteries won't be filled with executed political prisoners.

Senator, please.

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.

Don't say that again, some may be tempted to try.

Who? You?

I'll consider it.

The Supreme Court is confirming your impeachment.

You have to leave the country.

Please, listen to me.

If you leave the country without authorization,

your legal situation will worsen.

But I'm getting impeached anyway.

Don Pablo, this is the Party's position.

Pablo should let them arrest him.

Absolutely not.

Am I more dangerous in hiding or in prison?

- In prison. - What are you doing?

A fugitive.

- Do you really think so? - Sure.

Then we'll have to run away.

Pablo can't be regarded as a mere political leader.

He's a writer. His obligation is to write.