Pablo Larraín’s “Post Mortem,” a film of great restraint and horrific implication, is set just before and after Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 military takeover of Chile. Unlike many historical-political dramas, however, Larraín’s features no onscreen text to set the scene, no long-winded exposition-laden dialogue to indicate our protagonist’s ideological stance—only the grinding of a war machine already in motion. Is this a glimpse of Chile after the coup, or is this tank—shot from below, as an ant might view the boot about to crush it—rolling along somewhere even as Mario (Alfredo Castro) stands in his living room on a silent afternoon? In “Post Mortem,” memory is neither chronological nor linear, but compressed, and the boundaries separating inside and out, pre- coup and post, are thin indeed.

The same could be said for the boundary, insofar as one exists, separating comedy and tragedy. Larraín infuses “Post Mortem” with the very blackest of humor—“gallows humor” is too quick and painless, so perhaps “asphyxiation humor” would be more appropriate here. In doing so, his short, sharp film conjures a pervasive unease more visceral than a sweeping three-hour epic might be. Mario, a self-described “functionary” who transcribes autopsy reports for the local coroner, alternately resembles a sad clown and the Cryptkeeper, and Castro’s opaque, unsettling performance ensures that we’re never quite sure who he is. He is persistent, however, in his attempts to woo his neighbor, an aging cabaret dancer named Nancy (Antonia Zegers), with whom he carries out a sad-sack courtship that ends in agony, with stops at miserable dinner dates and unfulfilling sex along the way. It all begins simply enough, when Mario gets out of his seat during a performance and walks backstage and into his paramour’s dressing room. As one number ends and the room floods with chorus girls, Mario stands among them, unnoticed. How easy it is for a spectator to become mistaken for one running the show.

The shuffling of events, presented out of order, used sparingly and effectively, captures the disorientation that must've followed the political upheaval of the time, shaping “Post Mortem” into a historical record no less vital for its imperfections. After the coup (which, appropriately, occurs offscreen), a government official informs Mario, “You work for the Chilean Army now,” whisking him away to a military facility where he's forced to perform an autopsy on former President Salvador Allende. This real-life event was reportedly Larraín’s inspiration for the film, and his commitment to verisimilitude is most apparent; he shot the autopsy scene in the same room (and on the same operating table) where Allende’s was performed in 1973. Sandra (Amparo Noguera), the surgeon charged with dissecting Allende’s corpse, breaks down while describing the wounds, but Mario just sits behind the shiny new electronic typewriter the Army has requisitioned for his use. “I have a position now,” he later reports to Nancy, his thin lips curling into what could almost be called a smile. Soon, the bodies are piling up as the Army dumps truckload after truckload at the feet of the bewildered medical examiners (often literally).

The film’s most protracted and macabre visual joke involves Mario pushing a cart laden with corpses, like something out of the Middle Ages or perhaps “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” down a long hallway, with DP Sergio Armstrong following behind at a distance. When one corpse falls to the floor, Mario stops to clumsily lift it back onto the cart, and the camera stops to watch him before resuming its motion. Throughout, Larraín and Armstrong retain a distance from their subjects that borders on the sadistic, shooting them in harsh, static compositions with aggressive framing. (A shot from behind Nancy’s head as she and Mario eat dinner at a Chinese restaurant perfectly eclipses Mario as well, ensuring we see nothing.) This lack of charity toward the audience may cause some to write the film off as indulgent miserablism (and the fact that Mario remains little more than a cipher throughout doesn’t do much to counter that assumption). But Larraín invariably chooses the abstract over the didactic and the constant back-and-forth between realistic docudrama and mordant absurdism keeps “Post Mortem” darkly compelling. “Where are they all coming from?” Sandra cries plaintively, as the bodies continue to pile up in the hospital entryway near the end of the film. The shocking final shot of “Post Mortem” ensures that we know where at least one of them comes from, but the answers this film seeks can’t be found through clinical examination. It may be that nothing cuts deeper than cinema.

Review by:
Alex Engquist