(WARNING: spoilers) I appreciated this movie foremost because it introduced me to the work of Pablo Neruda. The sequences where Neruda and Mario discuss poetry, and where Neruda explains the meaning of his work, are wonderful. "'Sometimes I feel I am not a man...' I have felt this way, too. When I read these words, I liked it." For me, this is the essence of what poetry is all about; an abstraction of words to communicate common human sentiment that is too difficult to explain normally. This was also a touching story of a small-town Italian man's struggle to enlighten and better himself, to be something comparable to the celebrity poet who is staying in his town. However, I found the movie overly simplistic, and certain plot lines seemed obvious and boring. Mario meets a mysterious, exotic, and tempting woman in his bar. They talk oddly. Skip to the next scene, and they're going out. Skip again and they're getting married. Skip again and they have a kid. It's all treated as obvious and any dynamic between these two people is ignored, background, save for a brief conversation between the woman and her mother concerning Mario. The same occurred with the ending to the movie. Neruda returns and finds that Mario has been killed in a protest rally, struggling to be more like Neruda. This, again, was treated as an obvious plot development. No discussion or conflict ever arose as to the fact that Neruda ignored his friend. He merely returns, finds his friend dead, gets the obligatory speech from the wife, and the movie ends. Overall the problem with the movie was too much hinting and not enough of the important aspects of the movie being displayed. It's quite possible this is a common dynamic of Chilean films. Definitely worth seeing, but don't expect to be too deeply moved, only a little.
Review of Ardiente paciencia
