Carts of Darkness (2008)

This is a documentary film about homeless men in Northern Vancouver who go around in shopping carts, collecting empty bottles to return. When the movie first opens, we learn that these men ride around at break-neck speeds down hills on these carts, and race each other too. It's described almost as an extreme sport of sorts.

This is where the filmmaker come in. The person making the movie was at one point very into snowboarding, and would seek out extreme situations for the adrenaline, but due to an accident, he has been crippled from the waist down and is now in a wheel chair. In this shopping cart racing, he finds a similarity to the adrenaline he found as a snowboarder, and he tries to get close to these men, to be let into their secret world.

The men in this film go through blue boxes and garbage, loading up their shopping carts with glass and plastic bottles. When their cart is full, they go over to a recycling plant and return the bottles for money. As we eventually find out, this money is then spent primarily on cigarettes and alcohol. Most of these men 'rough it', some sleeping out in the woods or under tree cover, tents, one guy has a trailer. As we learn more about these men, they seem oddly content with their place in the world. There is constant talk of how free they are, how little they have to work, this and that, but at the same time, we are also faced with some carefully hidden discontentment. They seem to all be alcoholics, one of the men speak about having considered suicide, and not being able to stay in a shelter because having to face with other people's problems and addictions as well as your own. These men definitely live for the moment and in the moment, not having more than a couple hundred dollars, if that, to their name at any one time.

When this movie was first described to me, I thought it was a hilarious idea. Homeless men making an extreme sport out of racing shopping carts. When I began watching the movie, I realized that it was less about the shopping cart racing than it was about a creative lifestyle combating homelessness, but by the end, I was somewhat depressed. These men are facing some personal trials, and are trying their best to live normal lives, but can't seem to escape the situation. They don't want any help either. This I can understand though, as was also stated by the filmmaker. Sometimes when you're not at your best, when you're facing a personal trial or feel that you've failed, help from someone else just feels like a reminder of your flaws, or a recognition that you can't take care of yourself. Anyway, an interesting movie. A unique look into a segment of Vancouver's homeless population.