Roast-Apocalyptic
Bombay Beach
Adrifted & Talented
Official Website |Â Trailers & Mo
Not Rated | 80 min
Hell on earth is often an idea of a place that doesn’t really exist, but the Salton Sea area could easily be such a place that does indeed exist, if you can call it an existence.  Once a hot resort spot of the 60s LA crowd, it is now a bastion of broken and forgotten dreams, littered with sketchy people who’d be right at home in a Harmony Korine film.  The Salton Sea is right up there with the Gaza Strip and Uranus as one of the least likely places we’d ever want to live.  Luckily we don’t have to, or even go there, cause Israeli docuemntarian Alma Har’el takes us there (specifically Bombay Beach, which isn’t even a city, it’s a ‘census-designated place‘), presenting us with a poetic postcard of a true American nightmare
Har’el first encountered the area while looking for a music video shooting locale for Zach Condon’s Beirut band, and if you watch the end result of Beirut’s ‘Concubine’ you will see the ugly/beautiful seeds that sprouted this rotten/lively tree that is her first documentary feature.  Condon returns the favor by scoring the doc, and it feels like an 80 minute music video.  That’s a good thing.  We sure hope Fincher’s Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is too, like its trailer, but it won’t be
Har’el follows 3 sets of folks – a pilled up kid with anarchist parents, a lyrical and moldy old dude who sells individual cigarettes for teeny profits, and a South Central LA transplated kid who has found an escape in a place where most people want to escape from.  Some of their scenes are manufactured, like a lot of reality TV shows do these days, but this is a lot more realer, and morer hauntingerer than anything you’d see the Kardashian sisters do
Life isn’t always a beach, and thankfully, most beaches aren’t like Bombay Beach
Muss Be Sea-n To Believed: ‘Life After People’ did an ep about the Salton Sea, even though there are people still there!!!
Verdictgo:Â Jeepers MOS DEF Worth A Peepers
Bombay sets sail in NY this Friday, LA next Friday, and elsewhere elsewhen
and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…