‘El Conde’ Is the Fascist-Vampire Movie of the Year
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Born on Nov. 25, 1915, Augusto José Ramón Pinochet would rise through the ranks of the Chilean military and, having become commander-in-chief of the nation’s army, lead a coup against the country’s president Salvador Allende in 1973. This would kick off Pinochet’s political reign — and reign of terror — for the next 17 years. He’d escape persecution for the countless crimes committed during his regime and was unrepentant about his dictatorship (what were mass graves of dissidents but more “efficient ways of burials?”) up until his death in 2006.
This is what the history books tell us. Pablo Larraín, however, would like to set the record straight. Per the Chilean filmmaker, Pinochet is not dead. In fact he’s very much undead — a 250-year-old vampire that was bitten when he was a soldier in the French army during Louis XVI’s tenure on the throne, and who escaped persecution and fought against revolutions in Haiti, Russia, and Algeria before ending up in Chile in 1935. That “death” in 2006? Completely faked. He’s alive, if somewhat unwell, and residing in a countryside estate. Pincohet prefers British blood, “which tastes of the Roman Empire,” but any plasma will do. Mostly, he drinks blender-made heart smoothies. This vampire would like to shuffle off this mortal coil soon, though that’s proving to be harder than he thought. Besides, when you’re a dictator whose brutal rule over a nation still taints generations upon generations of Chileans, do you ever really die off?
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Taking its title from Pinochet’s preferred nickname (“The Count”), El Conde is many things: a conceptual horror film, a pitch-black political satire, a reckoning in the most fantastic and capital-G Gothic way imaginable, and the last word on fascists as actual monsters. Mostly, however, it’s Larraín’s way of trying to come to grips with what happened to his country when a madman bent it to his corrupt, power-hungry will, with the only logical conclusion being that it had to be a literal bloodsucker sucking the blood out of Chile. He’s dealt with Pinochet’s legacy and looming presence in a lot of his previous work, from the disco-feverish serial-killer thriller Tony Manero (2008) to his recounting of Chile’s 1980 referendum vote No (2012) to the secluded-offenders drama The Club (2015). This is the first time he’s taken on the dictator directly, and his decision to do it by giving El Presidente fangs — and keeping his own tongue resting comfortably in his cheek — is beyond inspired. It may not be Larraín’s best film (we’d nominate No). But it’s unquestionably the movie he was, in so many ways, born to make. (It drops on Netflix Sept. 15 after a brief theatrical run.)
As played with striking resemblance to the real thing by Chilean actor Jaime Vadell, Larraín’s Count Pinochet spends his days puttering around to old military marches. He’s still hot for his equally corrupt wife, Lucia (Gloria Münchmeyer) — “I’ll ride you like a bandit’s horse,” he tells her as they dance — but Pinochet has grown tired of a life lived posthumously and out of power, so he’s ready to go. Which makes his sudden midnight jaunt into the city for fresh blood a bit of a surprise. It also gives us what may be the single most tantalizing set of images in Larraín’s body of work, with the Count in a cape and full generalismo regalia gliding through the sky over the streets of Santiago. He’s literally casting a shadow over his nation’s capital. The decision to film this parable of blackhearted evil in black and white is as much a testament to cinematographer Ed Lachman’s peerless chops as it is a throwback silent-cinema signifier (see: a silhouette shot on a ship that’s straight outta Nosferatu, which seems to be a popular reference point this year), and pays off in innumerable ways. Yet those scenes draw on decades of vintage horror in a way that feels simultaneously silly and chilling, and set the tone for everything. They’re like something out of a dream.
His after-hours excursion attracts the attention of his children, all five of whom descend upon the estate in search of answers and brimming with hope the old bastard will croak so they can get their inheritance. Also present and accounted for are Pinochet’s longtime butler and resident Renfield, a Cossack “forged from vodka and steel” named Theodor (Larraín veteran Alfredo Castro); and Sister Carmen (Paula Luchsinger, rocking a Maria Falconetti pixie cut), the young nun that’s been sent to the compound by the church. She’s doing double duty as both a bookkeeper and an exorcist, with the former allowing her to voice the various ways that the Pinochet clan has bilked the country for millions over decades — a sense of accountability through accounting. As for the latter, Pinochet thinks that’s a futile endeavor. “She wants to cast the devil out of me… but me, I’ve got nothing inside,” he sighs. That doesn’t stop him from being smitten with his guest, however. “There’s nothing more gruesome than watching a man fall in love,” says the film’s narrator. “It’s worse than seeing a body without a heart.”
Right, that narrator: You’ll feel as if that clipped British voice sounds awfully familiar, and when we do meet the female behind it and have our suspicions confirmed, it helps to serve as a larger symbolic swipe. Larraín had done wonders with strong, famous women who distinguished themselves from more powerful men, as fans of Jackie (2016) and Spencer (2021) can attest. (A third film on Maria Callas is underway, thus completing his informal trilogy.) The use of another well-known female figure here, as concocted by Larraín and his cowriter Guillermo Calderón, is meant to be an indictment of political power structures as a whole, as well as what’s done in the name of national rulers. It’s also the moment in which El Conde either permanently loses you by crossing a bridge too far or firmly has you in the palm of its bloodstained hands.
Even those who refuse to pick up the gauntlet it sets down will still be able to bask in some unforgettable images — not just the Count silently swooping past skyscrapers after hours but flying nuns, licked guillotines, a coda with a school signpost that’s a hell of a killing joke. What ultimately stays with you, however, is how Larraín has audaciously staked the heart of someone who tore his country apart and still knows that it isn’t enough to slay the beast. These creatures of the night may be vanquished, but they’re part of a political brethren that has a nasty habit of multiplying. You can kill the inhumans who’ve committed such atrocities on a mass scale, whether in the name of power, corruption, or greed. You can’t kill the inhumanity that led them to do those things.
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