In 1905 the Colorado River burst through a series of man-made dykes and flooded part of the California desert, creating The Salton Sea: a new, heaven-sent playground for the American people. Real estate developers descended on the unstable new lake; building entire communities for the hordes of eager holidaymakers that needed somewhere to rest after the slump of Europe’s wars. But by the 1970s it had become clear that rising salination levels and run-off from surrounding farmland were creating a toxic and unsustainable environment. The holidaymakers and developers packed up and headed back to the coast, leaving a skeletal graveyard of plywood bivouacs to bleach in the sun.
Alma Har’el’s beguiling and infectious debut feature is not the first film to take the Salton Sea as its location; but it is the first such film to avoid taking it as a primary subject. Everything that needs to be said about the Sea itself is said very early on with one simple cut: from archive footage of the shimmering Madison Avenue dream, to Har’el’s own footage (shot on a store-bought Canon video camera) of the barren, forgotten reality. From here, Har’el immediately hones in on the small, dilapidated community of Bombay Beach, on the Eastern shore. The stalwart residents of this arcane settlement form the basis of a fascinating study in loneliness, isolation, and the feeling of being forgotten and left behind by the century that lost its shape.
Red is an aged oil worker who has lived in the same trailer home for half a century, separated from his entire family and history. He enjoys his simple life of bootlegging cigarettes from the Indian reservation, and espousing, in his cracked Burroughs drawl, the importance of keeping “blacks and whites” separate. He is mean and bitter and dangerously out of touch, but he ain’t hurting nobody.
CeeJay is a bright, athletic teenager who escaped the ganglands of Los Angeles to pursue a safer life. He trains day and night, and keeps newspaper clippings of his football triumphs. Like most young American athletes, he dreams of college scholarships, the Draft, and a career in the NFL; but in CeeJay this traditional, rousing dream is somehow tainted with melancholy. It is as if his ponderous life in Bombay has exposed the emptiness of such trite American aspirations.
The Parish family brought the community into disrepute when the authorities discovered that they had created an illegal weapons store of explosives and firearms. In the wake of 9/11 this DIY militia seemed a malicious threat; but in reality, it was just the playground of a bored and angry group of young men lacking the qualifications to blow things up beyond US borders. News footage of their filthy hovel and feral children seemed the perfect representation of this strange anarchic frontier town; but eight years on the family have been reunited and are making a determined effort to obey the laws of the land.
But how can we blame the Parishes for their erring lifestyles? They didn’t ask to be left alone out here, with no guiding hand or civil services. If the government want to leave entire communities to their own devices, without any civil projects or healthy distractions, then they cant expect to like what they see when they finally show up with their guns drawn. And rather than providing the Parishes with career advice or lessons in parenting; they have simply handed them enough Lithium and Risperidone to send the Serengeti into a gurning stupor. Their profoundly troubled youngest child, Benny, takes these drugs to control his violent behaviour, but he thinks it is because he is a weirdo. The truth of the film is laid bare watching this lively 8yr-old dribbling in the back of a car, terrified to return to school in case he misbehaves again.
It is the brightness in Benny’s eyes whenever Har’el arrives with her camera that confirms the importance of this film. It will remain valuable as a piece of art, and as a recording of an important American story; but in its very production it was a valuable community service to the people of Bombay Beach. Har’el’s background in music videos may have inspired her decision to include surreal dance sequences performed by the shaven-headed children of the town. It is a bizarre amalgam of Busby Berkeley, Michel Gondry, and Harmony Korine (and this from a critic who hates drawing comparisons); and if it feels slightly awkward at times, this is soon assuaged by the sight of the excited children’s faces. The sequences are surreal, but if the definition of “surreal” is the removal of a familiar object to an unfamiliar setting… then there isn’t much in Bombay Beach that escapes this definition.
There are no answers or forecasts here, no insights into things beyond the confines of the Bombay Beach community (such as the recent Salton Sea Conservation Plan, which will see the surface area of the lake drastically reduced to a more manageable size). The film is utterly subjective and every moment of it is infected with Ha’rel’s whims and fancies. There is no plot or purpose, just a kind spirit filming and playing with a new gang of friends. Purists might prefer a more distanced and clinical approach to the subject matter, but Har’el has created a new way of dealing with a documentary subject: get involved, get creative, and get Zach Condon to write the soundtrack.
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