Bombay Beach is one of the poorest communities in southern California located on the shores of the Salton Sea, a man-made sea stranded in the middle of the Colorado desert that was once a beautiful vacation destination for the privileged and is now a pool of dead fish.
Film director Alma Har'el tells the story of three protagonists. The trials of Benny Parrish, a young boy diagnosed with bipolar disorder whose troubled soul and vivid imagination create both suffering and joy for him and his complex and loving family. The story of CeeJay Thompson, a black teenager and aspiring football player who has taken refuge in Bombay Beach hoping to avoid the same fate of his cousin who was murdered by a gang of youths in Los Angeles; and that of Red, an ancient survivor, once an oil field worker, living on the fumes of whiskey, cigarettes and an irrepressible love of life. Together these portraits form a triptych of manhood in its various ages and guises, in a gently hypnotic style that questions whether they are a product of their world or if their world is a construct of their own imaginations. Read more …
Quirky, moving and unique, it’s a haunting bedside view of the place the American Dream went to die.
Har’el’s is...a beautiful film, with crepuscular lighting Terrence Malick could envy.
The fact that Alma Har’el is still stuck in music video director mode makes for an interesting new breed of documentary.
Given the colourful flourishes and strains of Beirut, it's so engrossing you could watch a toilet flush as long as it looks and sounds this pleasant.
A soundtrack featuring Bob Dylan and Beirut gives a poetic lift to the visual desolation, while Har'el takes a determinedly upbeat line on this poor, tough, insular community.
It's a rich slice of Americana, and there's a great soundtrack from musicians including Bob Dylan.
While candidly exploring the hard lives of the characters and their families, the film does have some inspired moments of magical realism.
Drifts in and out of reality and leaves your head somewhere in between.
A compelling, highly self-conscious documentary, it's involving, mystifying, unpatronising and carefully orchestrated.
Dropping all pretence at objectivity with specially co-ordinated dance sequences, [the director's] approach is more empathic than entomological: she presents her subjects not as objects to be gawked at but as real people with hopes, dreams and stories of their own.
Bombay Beach and the allure of the ghost town
Alma Har'el
Edinburgh Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Friday March 23, 2012, until Sunday March 25, 2012. More info: www.filmhousecinema.com
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