Una sombra ya pronto serás

With the wanderer bleakness of a Sábato's "Héroes y Tumbas" - or better, with the "end of the road" tristesse, gallows-humor and absurdity of Onetti's "Cuando ya no importe" - piense en "Que el ultimo en irse apague la luz" (Montevideo's epitaph spray-painted on a marble wall of the airport) - but with a tanguero's nostaglia, a comradery and heartbreak of lost souls, a Cono Austral vision reminiscent of Hamsun's "Mysterier", of Kafka's "Prozess" (The Trial), but with the light, the perpetual wind, the sunsets, the rustic semi-ghost towns of Pampas, and an absurd, poetic love of life that despite all I suppose places it closer to Fellini - as though life were a concatenation of operatic scenes, mostly "recitativo", but interspersed with intimiate scenes, touching moments of failed dreams and haunting illusions, arias of exquisite beauty - evoked through the eye of an artist: quaint, charming, touching, sensual, eternal, all defining the question of life as a subtle joke. The final artistic trick is the knack of a graceful and timely exit, before the actor and his scene - his role on this stage called "earth" become grotesque. How did Shakespeare put it? And in how many words, how many scenes, how many emotions?

I haven't time to compose a proper critique - whatever - so scribble the above shreds of thought hoping they produce some intuitive vision of the magnificent - but simple, low-budget, humanistic work of art that is this film. I see no way to improve it. I wish there were more like it.

Though how many could I take? At least a year has past, yet I still haven't recovered from "Butterfly" - Jose Luis Cuerda's (Spain) equally simple but abrumadora pelicula. I feel like crying to think of it. "Sombra", on the other hand, I can see (and have seen)again and again and again - savoring many scenes, especially at the end. "Butterfly", I may never watch again - its scars go deep.