Living the life of a creative person is not always easy – for every world-renowned artist, there are a thousand who genuinely believe that they have the potential to make it in the industry, but remain in obscurity for their entire lives. The reasons for this are complex – it could be a matter of lack of visibility (especially if one lives in the so-called Global South, where the arts are not given the worldwide exposure they deserve), an over-saturation of the market for their chosen field or quite simply a lack of talent, or at least a situation where their skills do not match what is required to elevate their work from a mere hobby. All of this comes together to form A Poet (Spanish: Un poeta), a brilliant and subversive film by Simón Mesa Soto in his sophomore directorial outing, which has proven to be one of the year’s most surprising films. It follows Oscar, who believes he should be viewed as Colombia’s greatest living poet. His reasoning is the fact that he published two books – often avoiding mentioning that they were published decades before, and were seen as nothing but serviceable works, rather than generation-defining masterpieces. Nearly penniless and entirely dependent on his elderly mother to survive, Oscar is always seeking opportunities to make money quickly, and when he crosses paths with Yurlady, a teenage poet with a lot of potential but a lack of a mentor, he sees the chance to not only make a fortune, but also establish himself as a literary force, despite not having nearly the same skills that he proposes he can teach her. A wonderfully strange and utterly brilliant work that contains some of the most subversive and challenging commentary on literature, society and the human psychology that we’ve seen in many years, A Poet is a brilliant work – a film epic in scope and layered in meaning, driven by several exceptional components that come together to create something quite beguiling and frequently very memorable, a work of unmitigated ingenuity that is only made more extraordinary by how it handles tone and style in tandem. One of the year’s most surprisingly daring works, and a masterful examination of a number of themes, A Poet is quite an achievement, even at its more challenging and intentionally incomprehensible.

The concept of the tortured artist has been frequently used as the foundation for many works of literature (especially since it gives the creator the opportunity to insert their own perspectives without making it explicitly autobiographical) – but A Poet does something slightly different, by means of being a film about an artist who tortures those around him. Oscar is a peculiar character, a man driven by the desire to create, but who wholeheartedly believes that he deserves to be acclaimed without actually doing the hard work. The way the film explores this is fascinating – Oscar lives a relatively simple life, at least in comparison to his idols. However, he is not struggling in the sense that he can actually use this as a selling point for his work – he’s not impoverished and he has access to resources that his artistic heroes would have envied, but yet he is so desperate to be seen as some artistic hero of the working-class population of Medellín that he has driven himself to the point of madness. This is what Mesa Soto uses as the foundation for the film, which oscillates wildly between so many different ideas, but where each one of them circles back to the central thesis statement, which is, namely, that of being an exploration of a truly pathetic man whose delusions of grandeur far outweigh his actual skills. In the process, the director subverts so many traditional points of conversation around art and its creation – Oscar is not untalented, but he’s also not particularly gifted in the sense that he is immediately going to be remembered as an icon of his field. In fact, it’s this realisation that his entire legacy is through paper-thin editions of poetry that are only mildly praised, that informs his quest to leave an impression through guiding Yurlady along a path he claims to have experienced himself, despite actually not having the same level of insights that he proposes as expertise. It’s a fascinating deconstruction and openly ridicules those artists whose inflated sense of self-importance far outweighs their ability to create, leading to a series of hilarious misadventures that become more unsettling as the film progresses.

To realise these themes, the director needed to find the right actor, and considering the complexity of the role, and how the film is essentially a two-hour showcase for a performer’s range of skills as they run the gamut of emotions, we can expect just about every Spanish-speaking actor of a certain age would have envied this role. Surprisingly, the part was given to Ubeimar Rios, who makes his acting debut as Oscar – and the moment he appears on screen, we can understand exactly why he was chosen for the role. A schoolteacher who shared a mutual acquaintance with the director, he seemed to be tailor-made for the role of a man yearning to understand the new generation while still maintaining his expectations for his own future ambitions, which become increasingly less likely the more he realises that he is becoming a remnant of the past. It’s an astoundingly impressive performance that would take even the most seasoned veterans an incredible amount of effort to even begin to emulate. There is a belief that acting experience equates to being able to tackle challenging roles, but there is a case to be made for the raw, untrained approach of non-professionals when it comes to certain characters, which is absolutely the case with A Poet, and Rios’ astonishing, daring performance. There is something so incredibly visceral about how he approaches this character – it’s ostensibly not based on his own life, but he has spoken about some connections he feels with the character (which are the more positive elements for the most part), and his process of working closely with the director to find the truth behind such a complex individual. It’s absolutely stellar work, and Rios brings so much unexpected nuance to a role that could have easily been overplayed in the hands of someone who was too focused on finding the motivation for the character rather than simply allowing the material speak for itself, something that we find drives this incredible performance, which is easily one of the most surprising and compelling of the year so far.

Much of what makes A Poet so compelling lies in its simplicity – this is not extravagant, overly complex filmmaking, despite the wealth of ideas presented throughout. Mesa Soto was inspired to explore the trials and tribulations of the working-class in contemporary Colombia (a country that is not often represented in the way it deserves in a lot of mainstream works), but goes about doing this through some highly unorthodox methods, viewing it through a more darkly comedic lens that strips away all the traditional kind of decorum that we would expect from a film handling these issues, and redirecting our attention towards the more subversive elements. This is very much a film built around the tone more than anything else – it is extremely funny, but in a way that evokes works of nihilistic comedy, where the banality of everyday life is the target, and the decomposition of social order, which the director posits as being gradual more than sudden, is the source of some surprisingly astute observations. At first, we’re fascinated by the lengths to which the film is willing to go to highlight the social and cultural milieu that is present in contemporary Colombia, while still being a subversive deconstruction of one man as he undergoes what he believes to be a journey of self-discovery, but ultimately just proves to be an exercise in futility by someone who lacks any real knowledge or skill, outside of being able to convince everyone around him that he is capable of much more than his capacities may suggest. It’s a brilliant example of how humour can be used to unsettle and amuse in equal measure – the uncomfortable, awkward comedy blends brilliantly with the more harrowing socio-cultural elements, becoming a perfect combination of tones, leading us to wonder the extent to which what we are seeing should be taken at face-value, or if it hints at the director communicating something deeper and more complex. Needless to say, A Poet is quite elaborate in how it constructs this character and allows him to fester into this pitiful villain whom we cannot help but feel sympathy towards, while still maintaining some degree of disdain.

A Poet is a riveting, well-crafted dark comedy that starts as a fascinating account of South American culture and how art often not only reflects society, but can occasionally define it in many ways. It gradually evolves into a character study, in which we are introduced to someone who skirts along the edges of outright villainy so frequently that his morals are never in doubt, and eventually become so ambiguous that part of the fun of the film is trying to determine whether he is capable of going even lower, and if he can scrounge up enough scruples to sacrifice for the sake of his vain attempts at fame which consistently fail. It is anchored by one of the most complex, daring performances of the year, and driven by a sense of genuine chaos that is controlled with precision and charm by a director who constantly knows how to keep the audience engaged. It takes some time to fully hit its stride, but it is captivating from the start, with the simple but evocative filmmaking (much of the film being shot using handheld cameras, giving it an additional sense of intimacy and grit that contributes massively to the story) and the immediately amusing tone creating quite a vibrant atmosphere that makes us understand entirely what is being communicated, even when it can require some active participation from the viewer for us to comprehend the scope of the satire being presented to us. Many films look at the lives of artists, but A Poet is an example of one that shows how not every one of them is worth supporting, since some are genuinely just despicable people – and the great brilliance of this film is that it somehow does this while still creating a sense of compassion in the viewer (albeit one that is motivated more by morbid curiosity – we want Oscar to succeed in one of his small pursuits just so we can see his efforts fail continuously when approaching the big achievements), which is incredibly difficult to do effectively, and something that we find motivates every aspect of this incredible, challenging film.