Roast-Apocalyptic

12. Oct, 2011 0 Comments

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. Â 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. Â 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. Â Luckily we don’t have to, or even go there, cause Israeli docuemntarianÂ Alma Har’elÂ 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 firstÂ encounteredÂ the area while looking for a music video shooting locale for Zach Condon’sÂ BeirutÂ band, and if you watch the end result ofÂ Beirut’s ‘Concubine’ you will see the ugly/beautiful seeds that sprouted this rotten/lively tree that is her first documentaryÂ feature. Â Condon returns the favor by scoring the doc, and it feels like an 80 minute music video. Â That’s a good thing. Â 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 individualÂ 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. Â Some of their scenes areÂ 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!!!