La sombra del caminante

'La Sombra del Caminante' (The Wandering Shadows) is a remarkable piece of cinema. This film is set around the wide streets and narrow barrios of the Colombian capital, Bogota. Mane (Cesar Badillo) has no work, a wooden leg and is subject to the cruelty of his landlady's brother, a former army sergeant, who scorns and berates him for his disability and his wretched poverty; and the barrio thugs who regularly taunt him and beat him up.

In spite of his harsh treatment, Mane is determined to keep his dignity. He begins to recover his dignity when, after being badly beaten up by the barrio thugs, he is aided by an enigmatic stranger, who makes a living by carrying people around the city on a chair strapped to his back. The good samaritan gesture by the chair man (silletero) begins a unique friendship between the two. The silletero (Ignacio Prieto), who wears dark goggles that conceal his eyes, will not tell Mane his name, nor disclose anything about his past, despite Mane's attempts at befriending him.

Piece by piece the silletero learns small details of Mane's life and this begins the process of opening up the terrible secret that links these two men and their respective fates on the streets of Bogota. The silletero depends greatly on drinking tea which he makes from an unusual plant from the Colombian jungle. This plant turns out to be the Holy Grail of the film's narrative, and we finally discover that the silletero carries a much greater weight on his shoulders than worn out Bogotanos.

This is an important film that rewards the patient viewer. It is a tale of human beings struggling to maintain their dignity in the most wretched ofcircumstances. This is a film that explores the terrible predicament ofthose affected by war, poverty, crime and displacement in Colombia, butits message is hauntingly universal.

Two men meet in downtown Bogotá. One is Mañe, an older man missing a leg and the means to survive in a city that couldn't care less. The other is a "silletero", a man with a chair on his back, who carries people around for money. Their strange friendship slowly takes them to the exact place from which both tried to escape: their past. This Colombian movie originally titled "La Sombra del Caminante" is in black and white, and with its barebones production it looks at first like a student movie. But the absurdity, the dark humor and the mystery that drives the characters quickly win your attention. The end result is a movie that doesn't let you go.

The people inhabiting "Wandering Shadows" have no use for empathy and even less so solidarity. The landlord of the room which Mañe rents, a retired and often drunk army sergeant, yells at him for being late on his payments. "You are a cripple, go live in an asylum" he tells him. It's worth noting that the sergeant himself has a limp and he is walking with a cane.

A functioning government is also nowhere to be found. When Mañe comes to the labour exchange office to look for a job, he is told to pay 10,000 peso and not to worry. In return he gets a mock medical exam and a motivational speech in which the hopeful applicants are told to believe in themselves, and the job will come, as if unemployment is a mental, personal problem of the applicants rather than a structural failure that the government has to address. The government not only doesn't help, it interferes. When the man with the chair encounters policemen, they tell him he isn't allowed to work without a special permit.

Young Ciro Guerra (he was 25 when he completed La Sombra del Caminante) brings an austere symmetry to a spare tale of two losers on the streets of Bogota, Colombia. It begins with a mysterious figure in goggles building a chair to fit on his back and carry tired people through the streets for a fee (Chair Man, Ignacio Prieto). Immediately, our interest is piqued. Who is this character? Next we encounter Mañe (Cesar Badillo) a cripple who is bullied for money by his landlord and regularly knocked down by the local yobs. One day, Mañe wakes from a beating to find he has been rescued by the Chair Man. Mañe's attempt to befriend his rescuer is the arc of the story. First, Mañe reveals the dreadful experience that crippled him; after much coming and going, he finally extracts the Chair Man's story, and it's a horror that he did not wish to know: and yet, it brings a kind of closure to Mañe, and a resolution to the film. Guerra's allegory has a classic discipline and packs a huge punch as it delves into damaged lives to reveal wider, and universal truths. I await a chance to view Guerra's second film, Los viajes del viento (2009), with impatience.

The first film directed by Ciro Guerra, who shot the highly acclaimed "Embrace of the Serpent". This is really something you won't expect. Picture this, a man with a chair on his back, dark glasses and armed with an umbrella against sunlight providing his service (Lift) for people and a one-legged man with a traumatic past form a bond. What's your first thought? Not so interesting? Well, I suggest you think again. Because this one is a winner here. It totally delivers. The film provides an exploration of Bogotá and its lonesome corners. I have seen a powerful documentary called Orozco the Embalmer (2001) by Japanese photographer Kiyotaka Tsurisaki which takes place in the vicinity and crime riddled Bogota. Well, the Wandering Shadows is not on the same lines but has a power to open some eyes without being watered down. The film brings out some intense characters arcs with a common past of violence and by the hope for a better tomorrow. It shows how two opposites are used to create a balance of life, fuelled by the oppression around them. There are no scenery changes, dress changes or special effects which allows the viewer to truly focus on the characters as they travel towards a bittersweet ending. The biggest element that makes up this movie is the black and white tone which contributed to the atmosphere since it's a low budget film. Overall, If you want a movie that you can sit down and thoroughly engage yourself in, then I'd recommend this. The actors were great, the whole play style to it fitted, and it's well written.