El Conde: Story of a Deicide

Dictators abound in Latin America.

Gabriel García Márquez once said that ‘the dictator’ is an eternal theme in Latin American literature. When he decided to write a novel with a Latin American dictator as the main character, he began studying biographies of many Latin American dictators. He then learnt they shared many common characteristics, such as having lost their fathers, their mothers being very prominent in their lives, and that every dictator had their own peculiarities. For instance, General Antonio López de Santa Anna, who served eight times as President of Mexico from 1833 to 1855, held a solemn and grand funeral for the right leg he lost in the Pastry War (the first Franco-Mexican war waged in 1838-1839); Haitian dictator François Duvalier (who ruled from 1957 to 1971) claimed immortality and knowledge of witchcraft, and believed that his political opponents had all become black dogs and ordered the death of said animals on the island; Maximiliano Hernández Martínez (in office from 1931 to 1944), the Salvadoran dictator who worshipped fascism, had all street lights across the country wrapped with red paper as it was said to prevent the spread of measles; the Venezuelan dictator Juan Vicente Gómez (in power from 1908 to 1935), also known as the “the Tyrant of the Andes”, had his death announced before "resurrecting" himself. Based on this information, Marquez crafted his novel The Autumn of the Patriarch, in which an ageing dictator living alone in a palace reeking of corpses and decay recalls his life of using power to compensate for being lonely and loveless.

In other words, the dictator is a seemingly immortal and mythical figure imbued with superpowers in Latin American culture. Thus, it's no surprise when Chilean director Pablo Larraín wished to portray former Chilean President Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (ruling from 1973-1990) as a vampire in the film El Conde (2023). If The Autumn of the Patriarch is a "poem on the solitude of power", then El Conde is a "song of bloody greed."

Let’s take a look at a montage of the experiences of some people:

In 1973, Chilean Army Commander-in-Chief Pinochet launched a military coup, and the democratically elected President Salvador Allende (1908-1973) died in La Moneda Palace. One of Allende's last words to the public was, "I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain", whilst Pinochet said after the coup that “Democracy has to be bathed occasionally in blood so that it can continue to be democracy”. Three years later, a Chilean boy named Pablo Larraín was born. His father was the chairman of a major right-wing political party in Chile, which supported the dictatorship, and his mother once served as a cabinet minister in Chile's conservative government. Essentially, his family was a supporter and even a beneficiary of the coup.

In 1988, Pinochet's term was about to expire. Twelve-year-old Larraín witnessed Pinochet losing his chance to extend his 15 years of rule over Chile in a referendum.

Pinochet died in 2006. It was also at this time that Larraín, who has become a film director, began to create the "Pinochet Trilogy" – Tony Manero (2008), Post Mortem (2010), and No (2012). The first two tell the story of the silence, indifference, and even complicity of ordinary Chilean people – distant from political power – during the dictatorship, while the third depicts how the gradually awakening Chilean public used a referendum to dashed Pinochet’s dreams of getting re-elected.

In 2022, a film called Argentina, 1985 was produced in said country, telling a story of how Argentine prosecutors tried President Jorge Rafaél Videla, who launched a military coup, in a civilian court. Larraín thought the film was beautiful and was also aware that Pinochet had never been properly portrayed on Chilean screens in his own country, not even appearing in his "Pinochet Trilogy”. There was even mourning for Pinochet when he died. Thus Larraín decided to make a film about Pinochet. The reporter asked him during the interview why he wanted to depict Pinochet onscreen, subtly implying that he is not a victim of the regime. Larraín replied, “I’m fucking Chilean. It’s my world.” But Larraín also said, “We're not going to make a realistic story, because the realistic version could trigger empathy, and that is very dangerous. ... We're going to do a satire, a farce.”

Hence El Conde came into the world. In the film, Larraín undertook bold remixes for the narrative and genre. A shell of a vampire movie is mixed with a country house mystery, and an absurd and satirical plot coupled with gothic monochrome images altogether creates a political film with corrosive humour. The film can be said to be a combination of Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer's films Vampyr (1932) and The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), along with the novel Dracula.

In the movie, Pinochet(played by Jaime Vadell) is a dying 250-year-old vampire hiding in a mansion in the wilderness of Patagonia, South America. His five children went to his home to discuss the division of their father's inheritance; at the same time, the church sent a pious nun named Carmen（played by Paula Luchsinger） to exorcise the devil by pretending to be an accountant.

The director mentioned that there are several reasons for portraying Pinochet as a vampire. 1) During Pinochet’s reign, 1,500 dissidents “disappeared”, 40,000 people were tortured, and nearly 2,000 people were tortured to death. Yet he has never been properly portrayed on the screen; 2) Pinochet himself died in 2006, but he had never been tried or punished for his actions while in office. He remained free, and impunity made him immortal. Even about a third of the Chilean public thinks highly of him, viewing the general as a shrewd manager of the country's finances and a powerful bulwark against socialism. 3) Pinochet was a greedy thief and murderer. As Larraín said, "What Pinochet really achieved was that he turned us into heroes of greed." And the "vampire" is the most appropriate metaphor for greed and spreading greed. 4) “Blood-sucking” is also a symbol of the colonial relationship between Europe and America. In the book Open Veins of Latin America (1971), the author talks about Latin America as a sick entity with its blood vessels ripped open while its blood flows continuously towards Europe and the United States. So in the film, we see Pinochet gliding in the sky wearing a long black trench coat, looking for the next victim under his fangs. He also uses a juicer to blend hearts into a bloody milkshake in the dark basement, relishing the taste of human blood from every corner of the world. A mocking commentary follows, “English blood is his favourite, of course. He says it has something of the Roman empire. … Regrettably, however, the count has also sampled the blood of South America, the blood of the workers. ... It’s acrid, with a doggy nose. A plebeian bouquet that clings for weeks to his lips and palate.”

However, the theme of the film gets lost in the exaggerated farce and even gets overturned on its head. At the beginning of the film, Pinochet seeks death, seemingly as some kind of penance for his crimes. Yet afterwards, he almost became a victim – his children plotted against him, his wife and butler betrayed him, and the church sent a nun to exorcise him. Moreover, the film also turns him into someone with love, for he decides to start drinking blood again because he fell in love with Sister Carmen. However, the director forgot one thing: people love vampires, including Pinochet's wife and Sister Carmen in the film. The vampire's body seems to be a blessing, symbolising speed, strength and immortality. Even the devout nun becomes weak in front of Pinochet's advances, and their sexual intercourse becomes a ceremony to spread vampirism, turning "The Passion of Joan of Arc" into "Dance of the Vampires". When Carmen becomes a vampire, she seems to have gained freedom and a new life. She walks out of the deserted house in a fluttering white robe, opens her arms and flies high into the sky, soaring in the wind. She dances freely, accompanied by the soundtrack of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons". A vampire wearing the skin of a saint is undoubtedly a huge mockery of religion. Interestingly, it’s worth mentioning that this portion was all shot in real locations. The film crew used a 90-foot (about 27 metres) long crane from which Carmen and the photographer were wire-hung to obtain a realistic flying scene.

At the beginning of the film, audiences might wonder why there is a female voice-over recounting the history of Pinochet in English while the characters in the film speak Spanish. It’s not until Margaret Thatcher(played by Stella Gonet) appears and tells Pinochet that she’s his biological mother will the audience grasp why. It turns out that Pinochet's father was a vampire and rapist during the reign of Louis XVI in the 18th century. Thatcher also became a vampire and pregnant after being raped. After giving birth to her child, she sent him to an orphanage in Paris before going to England by herself and becoming Margaret Thatcher (this plot mirrors the fact that Margaret Thatcher called on the British government to release Pinochet who was under house arrest in London in 1999).

Through this element, the film returns to the bloody colonial history that Europe brought unto the Americas, and also condenses the chaotic history of mankind over the past 300 years into Pinochet, the "mixed-race" dictator. As a dictator who’s filthy rich, fascist, and a child borne out of rape, he mirrored not only Latin American dictators, but also Europe's Louis XVI (epitomised by Pinochet's fascination with Marie Antoinette, queen of France), Hitler, and even former US president Trump (he was called an orange vampire by the director).

At the end, El Conde throws out a tragic riddle: as the light of the 21st century is dawning, vampires are still soaring on the winds high above the modern metropolis while the tragedy of the curse is still blowing in the South American wilderness. ‘Noah’s Ark’ is struggling to float under the weight of all the wealth, and the vampire returns to Chile as a baby again, this time in colour.

However, it is undeniable that the film is too ambitious, overloaded with information, overly allegorical, and ungrounded emotionally, making it hard to focus for audiences and symbolic translation difficult. The audience can only down this strangely flavoured milkshake made of the gothic, vampires, saints, dictatorship, and other elements with a bitter smile.