Bombay Beach

If California were a country, it would be the eight-largest economy in the world. It is the most populated U.S state, and is the home of Hollywood. Los Angeles houses the super-rich and is often seen as a symbol of Western glamour and decadence, San Francisco is famous for its liberal activism, Silicon Valley is home to the world’s largest technology corporations, and Yosemite National Park is one of the most beautiful in the country, not to mention the world. These are important facts to consider when you watch Alma Har’el’s stunning debut Bombay Beach which documents the inhabitants of one of California’s most poverty stricken and desolate towns. It lies on the banks of Salton Sea, a fetid saline lake created by an accidental flood in 1905, whose salt levels are so great that nothing much can survive. However, a small collection of fascinating people soldier on and live out their lives in this dystopian utopia, which the movie documents. Har’el selects three individuals to focus on who together represent a triptych of manhood in its decisive moments. They are bipolar 7 year-old Benny Parish; CeeJay, an amorous high school football star; and  philosophical octogenarian poet-prophet, Red.

The film’s surrealism seems natural when capturing such a surreal place. Bombay Beach is an hour’s drive away from Palm Springs, yet you would be forgiven in thinking it looks like a nuclear wasteland. The visuals of Har’el’s film bore a striking resemblance to the Fallout video games series. This is unsurprising, considering those games take place in a fictional alternate history where the cold-war nuclear tension of the fifties, sparked a full blown nuclear war, and so the towns that survive are fossilised remnants of forgotten prosperity and hopefulness, much like Salon Sea itself, which was once known as the ‘California Riviera’.

Bombay Beach can easily be compared to Harmony Korine’s Gummo, or David Gordon Green’s George Washington, both focus on the inhabitants of small depressed towns, with an obtuse poetical style. Yet Bombay Beach is all the more fascinating than the other two in that it’s not a work of fiction, the fact these characters exist and breathe in this world makes for a compelling watch. On a final note, something ought to be said for the film’s musical quality. Every now and then the characters break out into choreographed danced while Beirut plays on the soundtrack. My only gripe here is the choice of music. I highly doubt the people of Bombay Beach are regular listeners to Beirut, and when the music plays the gentle poetical realism of the film suddenly breaks down and the whole thing becomes (at the risk of sounding like an arsehole) a little bourgeois. However, this is only a personal complaint, and should not detract from what is a beautiful and captivating 80 minutes of cinema.