The easiest thing I can say about Alma Har’el’s hybrid documentary Bombay Beach is: go see it for yourself. Some films defy description, and this is one of them. The documentary nominally follows three residents of a god (and government)-forsaken community on the polluted and dessicated Salton Sea. Once designed as a leisurely respite in the California desert, the resort dream predictably soured and the circus left town, bequeathing the remains to the hardscrabble lot that survive there. But it’s more accurate to say the director follows the subjects themselves, not their stories: the film’s narrative is as oblique as its visuals and rhythms are entrancing. Its politics touch on poverty, race, terrorism, and mental illness, among others, but are refreshingly (and strangely) agenda-free. If there is a credo, perhaps it’s, “Just Dance,” and I mean that literally, as the drifting stories are interspersed with choreographed dance routines. Har’el previously directed music videos, and that ethos very much informs this eclectic film, mostly for the better. As the poster proclaims, it features music by Bob Dylan and Beirut, who provide an evocative score for the film’s lyrical randomness. But what is it, finally, about? It’s a glimpse of three souls in flux, a shining, perhaps naïve, tribute to the deep and strange reality of American lives. Part Grey Gardens and part Gummo, it’s one of the most memorable films I’ve seen this year.
The first notable thing about Bombay Beach is the disparity of its characters. Har’el somewhat haphazardly introduces us to Benny Parrish, a young white boy from a dysfunctional, clan-like family; teenage football player CeeJay Thompson, a refugee of South Central gang life; and an old coot named Red, who sells cigarettes from his trailer and practically expires on screen. And those are just the majors; in fact, every person Har’el films could be a subplot. The film is brimming with memorable moments, whether it’s casual dialogue tossed off by the kids who menace Benny, the sexual brinksmanship of CeeJay and his friends, or the bizarre cookouts put on by Red’s compadres. It is to Har’el’s (and her co-editor Joe Lindquist’s) great credit that she imbues these scenes with humor and heart. The film as a whole is inexplicably moving and joyful, especially if you can surrender to its surrealist stylings. It’s almost as if Har’el caught complicated, troubled people on their very best days, repeatedly. She is able to smooth away the rough edges that I would expect hunger, violence, drugs, and crime to have on her story. I am jealous of the blithe way she navigates this world so marred by want and the shadow of death.
As much as I like this film, I also found it troublesome. Some of the scenes, particularly those with Benny, are difficult to watch. Many of the setups are gorgeously weird and lovely, like a scene where Benny rows a concrete boat in some kind of leotard outfit, a young, misfit Ziggy Stardust lost on a post-industrial moon. When you’re handed such natural casting, how can you not roll camera? But the poverty of Benny’s life, and the horribly inadequate care he’s getting for his growing mental, emotional, and behavioral issues, are far darker than the whimsical sequences Har’el designed for her subject. She makes no attempt to address her characters’ pain or how they fit into any sort of larger context than her own art project. I’m not arguing that the imperative of a documentary filmmaker is to educate (though certainly enough have taken that on, particularly with the confluence of nonfiction film and transmedia), but I was taken aback by how little the film concerns itself with the ethics of exploitation.
In Alma Har’el’s words, “The state of things in America now is fascinating. You see how the dream not only died but turned into a twisted fantasy that feeds all sorts of astonishing and symbolic situations.” Har’el, born and raised in Israel, has an outsider’s perspective, and she sees symbolism where I see a broken social contract. Although the child of immigrants myself, I’m touchy about how foreigners stake a claim to the American dream and feel somehow affronted or fascinated by its slow, sick demise (I once took a German visitor to a house party uptown, and when he learned we were in Harlem, he enthusiastically clapped his hands together and said, “Fantastic!”). But it’s altogether possible that I’m being curmudgeonly. I found Bombay Beach haunting and sad, but also visually remarkable. The director is nothing if not committed to her vision, spending a year shooting it herself with a retrofitted consumer camera. And the resulting portrait, even if it takes a soft focus look at some very hard issues, is poetry in motion.
