Bombay Beach

Dir: Alma Har'el

2011

****

Alma Har'el won the 2011 'Truer than Fiction' award for her debut, a rather dubious sounding award but after watching Bombay Beach it's actually rather apt. Bombay Beach is a unique type of documentary, obviously staged at times but never acted. The people are real, as our their lives. Bombay Beach does exist and life is tough, in a place that at one time promised so much to those who moved there. It's urban decay and all the wonderful things that can come from it, as well as the struggle. It somehow questions how we live as a society without speaking a single word. As well as the obvious hardship, people are making good lives for themselves and people are generally happy. It calls out the American Dream for what it is and suggests that instead of dream, people should wake up, get out of bed and start living. There is something quite natural, almost organic, about dance. Each chapter ends with each main character letting themselves go and breaking into what seems like interpretive dance. It's choreographed but very natural, like the Waggle dance of a Bee. This gives the film a certain dreamlike quality and poetical feel to what would have been a beautifully shot fly on the wall documentary. Never has fact and fiction entwined so well, I was memorized throughout.