Commentary: Bombay Beach

Bombay Beach, an unlikely documentary about a failed 1960s economic boomtown in the Californian dessert, premiered last night at the TriBeCa Film Festival. Shot with a hand-held camera from the director’s car and set to the music of Bob Dylan and Beirut, the film is a surreal and poetic introduction to life on the fringes of America. Beautiful and well-chosen footage robustly captures the lives of a variety of Bombay Beach residents. Interspersing traditional documentary footage with dreamlike montages of the area’s scenery and surreal moments in the lives of the people it follows, Bombay Beach is the filmic equivalent to a T.S. Eliot poem. Imagistic and beautiful, it frames moments of joy within an environment of poverty. The film shows the wasteland that is Bombay Beach not as a place of sheer despondency, but one of humanity, character, and kindness.

By focusing on the oddball individuals that make up life in Bombay Beach, the filmmaker imbues an economically depressed area with a massive dose of energy. Instead of belaboring the dereliction and struggle, the film celebrates the vitality of the town’s zany residents. The area’s eldest resident, a spirited and prophetic man who sells cigarettes and gives out wisdom, reflects, “Sometimes I don’t know where my next meal is coming from. Been that way my whole life, but boy have I enjoyed it.” He drags on his cigarette. This laid back acceptance of circumstance, though at first hard to palate, sums up the attitude of the town.

Though the area is poor and remote with most of its inhabitants living in trailers, the film captures life there as joyous and almost ethereal. Families work together, play together, swim in the sea together, and remain optimistic despite the fact there is little to be hopeful about within the town. They live in the moment, for the moment. A young mother fights against the lack of resources in the town to care for her bipolar youngest son. Through her efforts she demonstrates unending kindness and infuses her family’s life with purpose and potential. Transplanted from the dangerous streets of South Central LA, Ceejay, an aspiring NFL player accepts that life in Bombay Beach is “boring”, but sees this as an opportunity to focus on his goals. In this detached and surreal environment he has space to realize his aspirations. On the way, he even finds love. Ceejay dancing in an abandoned gazebo with his girlfriend captures the beauty and innocence of their youth. Like the rest of the film, the montage is so gorgeously and poetically rendered, it comes across as the visual personification of the mood created by Dylan’s Highway 61 album – surreal, spiritual, non-linear, and a touch transcendent.