Bombay Beach

Studio: Focus World
Alma Har'el

Oct 19, 2011 Web Exclusive By Selena Fragassi

When the former Governator developed those "Find Yourself Here" commercials to jumpstart California's tourism, chances are it wasn't an accident he forgot to include Bombay Beach. The once bustling post-war resort, a west coast Hamptons for celebrities like Sinatra and Jerry Lewis who flocked to the bordering Salton Sea in the '60s, has today morphed into a deserted shantytown overrun by clock-stopping gypsies and penniless drifters whose rust-drawn trailers and various animal carcasses litter the landscape where boardwalk restaurants and disco nightclubs used to be. Just don't tell that to little Benjamin Parrish, who has turned the dried up wasteland into his own field of dreams. It's introduced in lush detail by music video director cum first-time documentarian Alma Har'el in her first film, Bombay Beach, winner of the Best Feature Documentary at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.

Parrish, the wanderlusting seven-year-old who ebbs and flows between his recently incarcerated, questionably rehabilitated parents and daily doses of Lithium and Ritalin to control his bipolar disorder, quickly becomes the heart of Bombay Beach and just the starting point of the life in motion painting that also captures two additional coming of age stories in different stages. There's CeeJay, the escape artist teen from South Central L.A. who migrates to the near isolation to elude the inevitable street life that sacrificed his cousin and Red, the advanced-in-years cigarette bootlegger who is destined to die in Bombay as much as the once glory town died around him. If some can argue that an environment molds a person, Har'el takes it a step further by attempting to prove that an otherwise faceless town can quantify the human experience-and yet she does it with a deep affection and dissection of characters that are no less real than they are dramatic exposes.

Throughout the film, Har'el herself becomes an invisible enigma for the viewer who questions how a first-time moviemaker can be bold enough to strike a new school of documentary art-one that confronts the story with an impervious Gonzo focus yet provides a rogue interpretation of the emotional territory with pre-cooked choreography. Much of the movie offers unexpected interludes of interpretative modern dance (set to an original score by Beirut's Zach Condon) and perfected scenes that Har'el forthrightly admits to having been rehearsed. But where the line is drawn is as faint as a trail in the dusty Bombay sand and Har'el's ability, even as an Israeli national, to connect with the moral questions of the American Dream and dreams deferred is what makes this film not only honest but honorary.

While Bombay Beach may just be a postcard memory, not dazzling enough for TV promotions, the silver screen manages to fall just as soon as you fall in love with its people, namely Benjamin, CeeJay, and Red, who have done nothing more than find themselves here. (bombaybeachfilm.com)

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