Burning patience by Antonio Skármeta

Skarmeta is a Chilean exile in Berlin. His first film in an homage to love and poetry and political liberty. It is the story of a postman’s friendship with the famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. The low-budget first film won several national and international prizes for the ingenuity of its narrative. When de famous Chilean poet and politician, Pablo Neruda, comes to spend the summer in his house on Isla Negra, Mario the local postman – couldn’t wish for more post to deliver. Every day he hands over a big bundle of letters form all over the world. However, he wants something in return. He asks Neruda to “lend” him some of his beautiful love poems. He needs them desperately so that he can whisper them into the tender ear of the lovely Beatriz. This has its effect, but not the desired one. Beatriz strict mother Rosa knows who wrote the poems and takes Neruda to ask. She may think highly of him as a pet but when he allows his poems to be used to seduce innocent daughters then she respects him neither as a poet nor as a politician. While Allende’s electoral victory is being celebrated at Rosa’s bar on the beach, Beatriz is able to make her escape unnoticed. Mario’s boss, the telegrapher, has to drop Mario a broad hint to make him grasp what’s happening. And then matters take their course, with or without Rosa and with or without Neruda’s poems. Before leaving for Paris as his country’s ambassador, Neruda – as witness and secret marriage broker – attends the wedding of Marion and Beatriz together with the telegrapher. When Senora Rosa becomes a grandmother and has long since become reconciled with what has happened, Neruda sends a message on tape from Paris asking, for a recording of the sounds of home which he loves: the sighing of the wind, the ringing of the bells outside his house and the sound of the sea. But dark clouds are gathering over Chile. Allende is murdered. Neruda returns. As he lies dying, his house is guarded by soldiers. Mario, too, is snatched from his happy marriage and arrested. Antonio Skarmeta has lived in exile in Berlin now for almost nine years. He has written books and radio plays, has worked with the director Peter Lilienthal as the author of the film “La Victoria”, “All’s quiet in the country” and “The Uprising”. His film “Burning Patience” is his first independent work as a director (apart from a documentary film). Skarmeta has made use of this own experiences. As a fourteen year old he himself “borrowed” Neruda’s love poems in the same way, and as a Chilean poet and professor of literature he knew Neruda personally and was a friend. The main parts in the film are played by Chileans: Roberto Parado (the only one to come direct from Chile); he felt it an honour to play the part of Neruda. Osar Castro (Mario) is an actor and director in Paris; Marcela Osorio (Beatriz) belongs to a theatre group in Rome; Naldy Hernandez (Rosa) teaches drama in Rostock; and the amiable telegrapher comes from New Orleans and is the author’s father. Antonio Skarmeta sees his film as honouring the Nobel Prize winner, Pablo Neruda, the tenth anniversary of whose death fell on the 23rd September 1983.