A Poet (Un Poeta)

 

José Asunción Silva

A POET (Un Poeta)    B                                                                                                  Colombia  Germany  Sweden  (123 mi)  2025  d: Simón Mesa Soto 

The trials and travails of a tortured artist, who comes under extreme pressure to be relevant after some early successes that have left him at an impasse in his life, literally struggling to survive in shifting market demands that have left him behind, leaving him on the outside looking in.  There’s something deeply uncomfortable about the experience of watching a failed artist, yet Óscar Restrepo (first time actor Ubeimar Rios, a high school philosophy teacher in real life) believes that poetry is born out of suffering, using it as a refuge from his own inner turmoil, a source of his own identity that is slowly disintegrating.  Once a promising voice in Colombian literature and a rigorous admirer of José Asunción Silva, the most important Colombian poet, considered one of the leaders of Latin American Modern Poetry, Óscar published two slim volumes of poetry in his 20’s, and now he’s an unemployed, middle-aged drunkard who still lives with his mother and has lost the respect of his estranged teenage daughter.  Although he no longer writes, he does occasionally go on self-aggrandizing rants at the local poets’ association, where he is welcomed as one of their own, yet still kept at arm’s length because of his erratic and often self-destructive behavior.  A highly personal, semi-autobiographical reflection on the absurdities of pursuing a creative life, the pressures of the independent film industry, and the pursuit of meaning, coming out of what he calls “the worst version” of himself, Soto is a Colombian director, screenwriter, and producer who won prestigious awards for his earlier short films, which were screened at major film festivals around the globe, where all that acclaim brought with it intense pressure to remain worthy of that admiration.  Colombia, of course, is the home of famed novelist Gabriel García Márquez who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, largely for the colossal impact felt by what is one of the greatest novels ever written, One Hundred Years of Solitude, a 1967 magnum opus work that put Colombia and Latin America on the map, so there is immense pressure to maintain that legacy.  Told over four chapters, this is a film that celebrates the existential triumph of struggling for an artistic ideal, even in utter obscurity and failure, rather than settle for the instant superficial gratification that commercialism brings, as the American and European market demands from Latin America insist upon poverty, marginalization, and violence.  Considering the current climate, where poetry, like opera and ballet, is struggling to survive in this era of instant social media gratification, this film questions what kind of art survives today, truly authentic personal art or superficial art that can be sold internationally, as Soto challenges the idea of turning Colombian suffering into an exportable product, where art transforms misery porn into an aesthetic commodity.  Instead of drug trafficking, graphic violence, and explicit trauma, there’s something to be said in the everyday banality of the silent humiliation of failure.   

Óscar is not your typical protagonist, as he’s not handsome or charming, but is mostly a sad sack with a knack for ruining the moment, spirited and full of bluster in his drunken public outbursts lamenting the state of poetry in his home country before falling asleep in a drunken heap on the streets of downtown Medellín, like the discarded remains of yesterday’s trash, joining the invisible ranks of the homeless.  In Colombia, José Asunción Silva appears on the 5000 peso bill, while Gabriel García Márquez appears on the 50,000 peso bill, an everyday reality that disgusts Óscar, with an ever-looming portrait of José Asunción Silva hanging on his wall representing the personal intimacy and melancholy that he stood for.  What truly stands out is the jazzy, ambient soundtrack composed and performed by Swedish composer Matti Bye in collaboration with the Swedish instrumental group Trio Ramberget, like Dream Circle YouTube (3:06), Wrong Choices YouTube (4:11), and Mysterious Meltdown YouTube (2:06), which uniquely features a clarinet, yet also this Los Zafiros classic rooted in American Doo-wop music from the Cuban filín movement in 1960, La Luna en Tu Mirada YouTube (2:37), which introduces each new chapter, adding a starkly unique aspect of interior contemplation that provides underlying layers of poetic humanism to this quirky and absurdly offbeat film.  Rejecting the clean aesthetic, feeling more like a caricature that embraces imperfection, wearing almost the exact same clothes throughout, with the same pants and only one change of shirt, Óscar blends into the urban landscape as someone you never take a second look at, an invisible presence sinking in the quagmire of urban rot and decay, tortured by the misery that envelops him, as he feels unworthy of the film’s title, yet that’s all he lives for, striving for something that feels inaccessible.  After the exhaustion felt from the filmmaker’s his first film, AMPARO (2021), which left him empty and emotionally depleted, Soto considered abandoning his dream, this compulsive obsession of filmmaking, thinking he might become a full-time professor, deciding instead to portray the endless frustration that goes hand-in-hand with artistic creation, initially conceiving the film in an awkward mumblecore style but gradually expanded its comedic elements, describing the aesthetic as a “reality show about poets” that feels raw and dynamic.  In order to maintain a naturalistic and authentic feel, Soto utilized mostly all first-time non-professional actors, who bring their own honesty to the material, which is typically compared to the kinetic style of the Safdie Brothers, who are renowned for a frantic, hyper-realistic, and anxiety-inducing aesthetic, presented like a series of vignettes, often confined to congested street scenes which effortlessly capture the qualities that define the region.  Winner of the Jury Prize (2nd place) at Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2025, the film is shot on Super 16 mm by Juan Sarmiento Grisales, who also shot his earlier films, giving the film a grainy, naturalistic look, with an in-your-face style of handheld cameras that can be dizzying, following Óscar everywhere, always capturing his immediate reactions, where the entire film is like a Charles Bukowski poem, so perfectly realized in Brent Hamer’s Factotum (2005), alcoholic, dirty, messy, disheveled, and disorganized, yet out of that chaos comes an appreciation for beauty in the most unlikely places.  

Flailing in obscurity, Óscar tries to reinvent himself in order to gain the respect of his teenage daughter Daniela (Allison Correa), who literally wants nothing to do with him, as he was never there for her growing up, but in order to pay for her college expenses he decides to teach poetry in high school classrooms, which is a tough sell, yet it’s there that he discovers the hidden talent of Yurlady (Rebeca Andrade), who comes from humble origins, but has a simple yet unpretentious flair to her writing, mostly describing daily events, A Poet | Exclusive Clip YouTube (1:48).  When he touts her prowess for the upcoming Poetry Festival, it’s met with near unanimous approval, as she’s starkly different than what the organizers typically present, opening a door to new possibilities, as she is expected to represent marginalized peoples across Latin America.  When he meets with the organizers, Efrain (Guillermo Cardona) and Alonso (Humberto Restrepo), two men who are intimately familiar with Óscar’s erratic pattern of being unreliable and undependable, they are shocked to discover the unlimited talent of this young student, believing she is the poem Óscar has always been searching for, wanting her to read for the opening performance, hoping to generate publicity and donations from the authenticity of her blackness and her poverty, reflecting the influence of foreign embassies on local cultural institutions, informing Óscar that she needs encouragement, perhaps new clothes, and food for her large family that is barely eking out a living, hoping to gain their approval as well.  With everything riding on his young prodigy, Óscar projects everything onto her shoulders, his lost youth, his artistic frustrations, and his need for redemption, which she finds flattering, but she doesn’t write out of suffering and doesn’t want to be like him, nonetheless she’s a big hit, with a roomful of admirers, yet in celebration things spiral out of control, fueled by a series of Óscar’s poor decisions and drunken ramblings, A POET | Clip 1 - "Black Holes" YouTube (50 seconds), as utter chaos quickly escalates into a full-scale scandal, creating an epic misadventure for everyone involved, the kind of thing that can destroy lives.  Of course, Óscar is blamed, turning his hopes and dreams upside down, leaving him hopelessly rejected, as if he’s fallen down a black hole and can’t climb his way back out, where everything imaginable that could go wrong does, as he’s literally exiled from the only community that ever accepted him in the first place.  After an obsessive pursuit of cultural recognition, the film has a tender way of highlighting the two teenage women, Yurlady and Daniela, who are the real focus of the film, coming across as the freest spirits, each having a major impact on Óscar, who spends his whole life seeking cultural recognition, yet what really matters to him is a more humble ambition, the recognition of his own daughter, as it is that emotional connection that he needs the most, leaving the ending ambiguously open.  A raw and unflinching look in the mirror at the trouble and misfortune we get ourselves into, where all hope is seemingly lost, yet art has a way of reminding us that others have faced their own excruciating torments, yet somehow their work can not only survive but unite us as well, finding truth in the rubble of our existence. 

2013 Top Ten List #4 Tabu (2012)

TABU  (2012)             A          
Portugal  Germany  Brazil  France  (118 mi)  2012  d:  Miguel Gomes

People’s lives are not like dreams.     —Aurora (Laura Soveral)        

A bold, brilliantly written and directed film, where at least part of the joy is in its magical film construction, mirroring the original TABU (1931) directed by F.W. Murnau, a joint project with heralded documentarian Robert J. Flaherty, set in the Polynesian South Sea island of Bora Bora, inverting the two halves which were originally called “Paradise” and “Paradise Lost,” shown here in opposite order.  The film shares similarities to the original even in theme, as both comment on the effects of European colonialization in an otherwise native setting with a beguiling beauty that is so idealized that it becomes mythical.  Blending fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, becomes so seamlessly integrated in both films that the two halves continually comment on one another.  The brilliance of the Gomes film is the extraordinarily magical 2nd half, which is so stunningly beautiful, not to mention amusingly told, that the audience is so captivated by the originality of the story that there’s an instant desire to see the first half again, curious about what might have been missed to see how it all connects.  The second half of the film is all narrated by a single character who describes the story, where the sound of his voice is the only sound heard for the duration of the picture, unraveling like a literary work without dialogue or sound effects, other than some carefully chosen songs, giving the appearance of a Silent film, but the miraculous stretching of the imagination is a thing of beauty, startlingly original, more fabulously inventive than the tedious melodrama of the highly acclaimed, Academy Award winning The Artist (2011), which seems like a cheap imitation by comparison.  Two magical realist literary works immediately spring to mind, the most obvious being Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), all taking place in the mythical but intensely real town of Macondo, where surrealism and the supernatural are ordinary occurrences, stretching the boundaries of what is considered reality.  The second is Michael Ondaatje’s picturesque family portrait in his fictionalized autobiographical memoir Running in the Family (1982), where he returns to his native Sri Lanka (Ceylon at the time of his birth), blurring the lines between fact and fiction, recreating a scandalously colorful, highly detailed portrayal of his eccentric family, set in an exotic landscape of colonial decline. 

Shot in gorgeous Black and White by cinematographer Rui Poças, the more realistic first half is in 35 mm while the magical second half is blown up 16mm.  Opening much like the Coen brothers’ A SERIOUS MAN (2009), with an amusingly ominous Prologue narrated by the director himself set in the wilds of early European exploration of Mozambique in Africa, a Portuguese colony until 1975, with the sweaty black hired hands using machete’s to chop a way through the brush for a hero known only as “the intrepid explorer,” the unscathed white man all dressed up for a safari adventure in khakis and a pith helmet, but never lifts a finger to help, allowing others to do all the back-breaking work, sadly reaching an early demise when he feeds himself to the crocodiles, distraught with grief over his wife’s death, whose ghost can be seen on the shoreline warning him that he will never escape his heart.  In a unique blending of the present with the past, a transition shot suggests what we’ve been watching was being screened in a Lisbon movie theater, which middle-aged Pilar (Teresa Madruga) watches intently with an older gentleman asleep on her shoulder.  After a feigned attempt afterwards to impress her with flowery love talk that she ignores, they go their separate ways home.  With absurdist deadpan humor, the strictly Catholic Pilar leads an uneasy existence, concerning herself with the problems of others, offering her home to a young Polish girl visiting Lisbon with friends, which is amusingly rejected when the young girl lies about her identity, participating in human rights demonstrations, hanging a friend’s painting on the wall every time he comes over while continually rejecting his attempts at courtship, but her real interest is with her zany neighbors across the hall in her apartment complex, Aurora (Laura Soveral), a candidly outspoken and temperamental old woman and her devoted Cape Verdean maid Santa (Isabel Muñoz Cardoso).  Aurora has blown her life’s savings playing slot machines at the casino and is openly suspicious of Santa who she believes is casting Black magic spells.  Mostly seen from Pilar’s somewhat saintly perspective, the three women speak directly into the camera offering close-ups with extended monologues, contrasting their personalities, where both Pilar and Santa are driven by duty, straight-laced and conservative, leading dreary, world-weary lives while the more free spirited Aurora rambles on about recurring dreams of crocodiles and hairy monkeys lurking near her bedside, carrying the emotional burden of a troubled past, where her vivid recollections are simply a marvel of invention. While getting the least amount of screen time, the dour and taciturn Santa remains an object of scorn by her employer, though upon reflection, she may actually be the moral center of the film. 

Aurora’s medical condition takes a turn for the worse, suffering from the effects of dementia, but recalls a name from her past, Gian Luca Ventura (Henrique Espírito Santo), a rugged, still handsome, silver-haired gentleman that Pilar finds in another retirement home, stopping first for coffee in the artificially designed rainforest of a shopping mall.  As they sip their coffee, Ventura narrates in voiceover how he met the young Aurora, Ana Moreira from The Portuguese Nun (2010), fifty years ago in an unnamed African colony.  Draped in a literary feel, Ventura’s ingenious story has the playfulness of the García Márquez novel, richly detailed, extravagantly layered, literally transporting the audience into a magical time and place very much like the mythical world of Macondo, which is itself an elusive Paradise, one that eventually disappears altogether.  Aurora is the beautiful but spoiled and filthy rich heiress living at the foot of Tabu Mountain where native servants wait on her hand and foot, leading the ideal life with her perfect husband, Ivo Müller, the local game-hunter who resembles The Man with the Yellow Hat‎ in Curious George stories.  The young Ventura, Carloto Cotta, is a Bohemian free spirit with matinee idol good looks dodging arrest wherever he goes, eventually settling down next door, where we quickly learn he plays in a band singing Portuguese cover versions of 60’s pop songs, like The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,”  The Ronettes YouTube (2:46) or the Phil Spector produced Ramones cover of “Baby I Love You” "Tabu" Movie Clip #3, directed by Miguel Gomes  YouTube (2:57).  The film’s silence and apparent indifference to the native people and culture around them is simply chilling, especially expressed in a pool party sequence where they all appear oblivious to taking any interest in any life forms other than themselves, becoming obsessively self-indulgent, throwing caution to the wind, as represented by Aurora’s carefree love affair with her lusty neighbor Ventura, a completely reckless act that suggests tunnel vision, acknowledging the couple was “indifferent to the fate of the empire,” but perfectly expressing the casually hedonistic European view of colonialization.  The rhapsodic sweep of their romance is magically transporting, but also morally unsettling, while as they’re recklessly ignoring the dangerous marital consequences, they’re equally oblivious to the rising tide of angry militarism surrounding them. 

Following the Cahiers du Cinéma magazine tradition in France, where Godard, Rivette, Truffaut, and now Olivier Assayas all got their start in film criticism before they ever made a single film, Gomes worked as a critic in Lisbon as well.  Although his mother grew up in Angola, Gomes had never ventured into Africa until this film experience brought him to Mozambique, where at least part of the idea for the movie developed from meeting a group of aging Portuguese musicians waxing nostalgic over their days in pre-revolutionary Mozambique, where Gomes indicates “The Africa in the film is more like the mythology of Africa that was produced by colonialism—and, of course, by cinema.”  In his review of TABU Miguel Gomes's 'Tabu' - NYTimes.com - Movies - The New York Times, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott faults the director for glossing over the issues of colonialism in favor of a more compelling film aesthetic.  “Unlike other recent European films (like Philippe Falardeau’s “Congorama” and Claire Denis’s “White Material”), “Tabu” views colonialism as an aesthetic opportunity rather than a political or moral problem. It is full of longing — hedged, self-conscious, but palpable all the same — for a vanished way of life, in contrast to which contemporary reality seems drab and numb.”  But the film structure cleverly plays each half against the other, suggesting there are far-reaching consequences for both the doomed love affair but also practicing foreign policy politics with blinders on, as both lead to tragic ends, which includes the isolated sense of alienation in the first part, also a deep sense of regret.  Aurora, Santa, and Pilar reflect the aftereffects of the sins of the past, still attempting to piece together the disassembled remains of the earlier excesses, leaving psychological scars of wounded memories, still fragmented, unable to discern fact from fiction, historical myths from truth, both past from present, where the indifference of modern society is living proof that many of the wounds from the past have not healed, are still not understood, and continue to be mythologized, much like the continuing politicalization of the present, where dissenting points of view are attacked through heavily financed political advertisements, where it’s again hard to find the truth through the fabricated smokescreen of fiction.  What makes this film so unique is the clever playfulness of the tone, resembling the imaginative whimsy of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (2012), but with surprisingly more depth and complexity, adding more rich textures, subtle symbolism, a variety of wonderful characters, and an otherworldly effect, where Gomes finds strange ways to revisit the unpleasantries of the past through such an experimental and powerfully poetic approach.  TABU is a corrective for past crimes, this time utilizing authentic African songs and chants in balance and harmony with the surrounding lands, where despite the lush Silent screen visualization, it’s the white colonizers that continually appear woefully out of place.