Review of "Los niños invisibles" (Colombia)

“Los niños invisibles” is a charming Colombian film from 2001 about adolescent love and a more innocent time. It details the adventures of Rafael, a portly nine year old, who harbors a crush on his neighbor, the seemingly unobtainable Martha Cecilia. While his quest to gain the attention of this girl seems to obsess him, in reality, what is most charming about this film is not a story about first love, but the evocation of an idyllic upbringing in a small Colombian town, even if not lacking in social unrest. It is not as peaceful a period as it may seem, but nonetheless, there are certain timelessness that evokes not only the adventure of comradeship, but also, the quest to prove oneself.

It seems as if the inhabitants of this village out in the provinces are consumed by beauty pageants. They have a local representative who apparently has been chosen to compete in the national contest, and this mirrors the quest that the little boy has to gain a certain amount of recognition. The beauty pageant is, of course, an exercise in national unity, a reflection of the need to create rituals to unify the people. It is a coming-out party for this small town on the edge of a river.

The fantasy life of these adolescent boys is typical for all youngsters at that age. Desire propels them to believe in ghosts, in spirits, in the more dogmatic elements of a Christian theology that is both charming as well as repressive, in witches and in the hucksterism of a small-town itinerant trinket seller who has a ready supply of potions and elixers to combat all manner of diseases, amulets and pamphlets that promise, wonder of wonder, to provide a means to achieve invisibility! This is, of course, part of an oral tradition in which succumbing to the spell of the snake-oil salesman as he sang the praise and virtue of his wares was part of the enchantment, a willing part that bespoke a world filled with marvels, with the promise of novelty, with a recognition and temporary refutation of the anxieties that beset us all.

Rafael is seduced by the possibility of achieving invisibility, and he sets out to buy this pamphlet, one that he needs to acquire through trickery because it is ostensibly “not for children”. It contains spells, after all, one requiring the acquisition of a cat’s heart, and a hen’s liver, and the throwing of a scapulary with the image of the Virgin Mother, all done at midnight in a cemetery. It, of course, enchants the boys, who challenge each other to carry out their part of the bargain. But it is no modern-day parable of Glaucon, to recall that found in Plato's book about the man who finds a magic ring that confers invisibility to him, only to find himself becoming a murderous despot (a theme reprised in H.G. Wells's The Invisible Man).

The children do seem to be a little too stilted in their delivery. They take too much time, more than seems natural, to respond to each other in a prose that seems plodding. Martha Celeste, the girl in question, seems to be particularly wooden in her delivery, but the same could be said of the actors who portray the parents. There seems to be a lack of natural rhythm, as if the prose of a short story had been too faithfully reproduced, and not the vivacity of ordinary dialogue.

This movie does charm the viewer, however, I found it in the way in which the town gathers at night to greet the arrival of the first television station that, appropriately enough, is broadcasting the national beauty contest. It also is evident in scenes such as the storefront where a group of old men gather, caught as they are in immobility, not moving a muscle as the little boy circulates among them, a Mercury too fast to be detected, or in the effeminate shopkeeper who can’t help but tease the boy who inquires as to whether or not it might be possible to buy an “unblessed” scapulary. The town has its charms, even those evident in the revolutionaries who are just getting word of the message of labor agitation, the barber who incites the theater projectionist to strike because he is being exploited. If the movie is, indeed, meant to be a portrayal of life in Colombia in the 50s, we can’t help but be reminded of the fact that there was a civil war raging at the time, one known popularly as “La violencia”.

Enough to say that the children succeed, after a fashion, in achieving invisibility. Who can deny them their dream? As with any quest, however, perhaps it delivers to them treasures that they hadn’t suspected were there, ripe for the taking. The child lacks self-confidence, and while able to inquire about “radiographies” and about what makes him separate from little girls such as Martha Celeste (something he no doubt knew about in the narrowest sense because of his voyeuristic episodes watching the bathing woman), he finds that, rather than achieve invisibility, what he craved rather was to become precisely the opposite, to be awarded with the attention of someone whose affection and love he might win.

On a final note, the pace of the film seems a little plodding. It is slow, and at times it delves into a form of slapstick humor that doesn’t seem to accord with the idyllic nature of small-town life where, in a jarring element, we are greeted with the murder of the small-town revolutionary. (This seems much in line with the typical mode of a García-Márquez novel, in which strange outsiders arrive to disrupt and inject an element of violence that signals an intent to control.) “Bajo al Centralismo”, Down with Centralism!, yell the town dwellers at the end of the pageant whose broadcast they are all watching, as they greet the return to a familiar form of control, where the beauty queen from the capital wins.

The boys are of an age in which they yearn for their own form of autonomy. It is a reflective film in which the adult muses on what has been lost, because at the end, we are left with the impression of something that has disappeared.

¡Juventud, divino tesoro,
ya te vas para no volver!
Cuando quiero llorar no lloro,
y a veces lloro sin querer

(Canción de otoño en primavera, Rubén Darío)




Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
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