Alma Har’el’s dazzling documentary is an unlikely trip well worth taking.
Alma Har’el’s dazzling documentary follows three generations of inhabitants in a once prosperous locale by the Salton Sea in California. The good times and tourists have long since left town, leaving a community balanced precariously on the fringes of the American dream.
There is much that is bleak here – dead fish litter the beaches, the adults drink heavily and young protagonist Benny’s hyperactiveness is remedied by dosing him up with so many drugs he starts having serious fits. However, Har’el’s film finds an uplifting beauty through dreamlike choreographed dance scenes and Benny’s wild flights of fantasy that bring to mind the young boy in Maurice Sendak’s ‘Where the Wild Things Are’.
Add to that an original soundtrack by Zach Condon of Beirut and some choice cuts from Bob Dylan, and Bombay Beach is an unlikely trip well worth taking.
Published 2 Feb 2012
Promising looking documentary with original music by indie poster boy, Zach Condon.
An enjoyable but quietly unsettling trip to the fringes of the American dream.
Drifts in and out of reality and leaves your head somewhere in between.
By Aimee Knight
Bombay Beach director Alma Har’el serves up an intriguing painted poem of a film.
Some of the world’s leading documentarians take the pulse of an ever-changing artistic medium.
Joshua Oppenheimer’s bloodcurdling and brilliant follow-up to his doc smash, The Act of Killing.
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