Mario is a pathologist's assistant in Santiago who is responsible for noting down the pathologist's commentary during the post mortem. The job has given him a grey, deathlike appearance. Previously, in the days of the military coup, Mario became involved in a love affair with a show dancer, Nancy, who lives across the street with her younger brother David and her father, a communist and Allende supporter. On the morning ofSeptember 11, the date of the coup, a military raid takes place in Nancy’s house. Her brother and father are arrested. Mario then begins a frantic search for Nancy, who has disappeared, all the while having to endure pressure from the military who want to hide the real cause of death of the bodies piling up in the morgue.
Cinematography
The film has a projection aspect ratio of 2.66:1, which is ultra-wide and very unusual. One reviewer observes that "Post Mortem’s muted color scheme reflects the drab ‘70s world that only adds insult to injury for Pinochet’s trampled victims." With director of photographySergio Armstrong, Larrain shot the film on Russian Lomo lenses, the type used in the 1970s by Andrei Tarkovsky and other Russian filmmakers. The lenses are intended for 35mm film, but Larrain shot on 16mm film achieving a look he describes as "very special". Larraín describes the process of lighting the film as follows:
And then when we were shooting, we were doing all kinds of lighting setups, and we never liked anything that we had. One day we had an electrical problem and all the lighting we had set up went down before we started shooting. So I asked for somebody to turn on the lights for the room, and when I looked at the monitor I realized that I really liked the idea of using very regular light coming from the ceiling, but a lot of them. We created this very plain array so the film would have this public lighting look. It also made sense because there is a certain politic to it. And after the test we realized that it actually did work because it creates such muted colors with very little shadows and we liked that. It was plain, it was grainy, and the color palette was very special. So we only used regular lightbulbs, hung up all over the set but mostly from the ceiling.
Reception
The film is well-received by critics and considered further proof of Larraín’s talent, previously noted in Tony Manero. It received four stars from both The Guardian, which called it “an eerie portrait of a disturbing time” and Time Out, which praised the “humorously unconventional framings, expressively washed-out colour tones and mysterious low-key performances” that bring together “human comedy and historical tragedy to unique, and surprisingly emotional, effect.”. The New York Times critic A. O. Scott wrote that “the achievement of Post Mortem is to take rigorous and unsentimental measure of the unpleasantness”. Post Mortem has also been popular on the Rotten Tomatoes public film reviews website, where it has an 88% approval rating based on 34 reviews, with an average score of 7.08/10.
