L’Homme qui marche (2008) - film review

In the 1950s, Viktor Atemian is a forty-something Russian immigrant who makes a living as a translator in Paris.  One day, Victor decides to become a writer, so he sells his apartment and moves into a modest hotel.  He divides his time between scribbling in his notebook and giving Russian lessons.  The years pass.  Twenty years later, Victor still hasn’t published anything.  He has become a poor, solitary old man who appears to have wasted his life...

In a remarkable but unconventional feature debut, director Aurélia Georges delivers an intensely poignant portrait of a writer who, unable or unwilling to move with the times, ends up spending the last few decades of his life crossing a cultural desert.  The film was inspired by the real-life story of the Russian writer Vladimir Slepian, whose only published work was Fils de Chien (1974).  It is a haunting and strangely beguiling work which conveys the helplessness and tragedy of a talented artist who finds himself trapped outside the Zeitgeist of the time in which he lives.  In such a situation, the artist has two choices: to sell out and climb aboard the first passing bandwagon, or else remain true to his aesthetic and take the slow path to oblivion and starvation.  It is the latter of these two possibilities which most interested Aurélia Georges and motivated her to make this extraordinary film.

L’Homme qui marche would be quite a difficult viewing proposition were it not for the arresting central performance from the talented Spanish actor César Sarachu.  Sarachu’s portrayal possesses something of the tragicomic quality of Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot.  There is a self-sufficiency, a slightly creepy eccentricity that sets the lead character apart from the crowd and makes him look like an alien struggling and failing to integrate with the people of planet Earth.  It is not that the character doesn’t want to fit in, he just cannot do so.  He is trapped in his own little bubble whilst the world around him moves on, a train that is going too fast for him to climb aboard.   Artistic integrity comes at a price, but for some the price is well worth paying.   Don’t be put off by the film’s apparently bleak subject matter.  This is a highly engaging and beautifully composed piece which provides a pointed reminder of the ephemeral nature of art, its melancholic mood lightened by its humanity, its compassion and some deliciously quirky humour.

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