Conscious Choice: Reviews

October 2008 | Art & Soul

Reviews

Film

Trouble the Water
In Theaters
Directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal
90 minutes
troublethewaterfilm.com

While government officials were jockeying for “Brownie” points, residents of New Orleans watched floodwaters rise and recede down their homestretch of the 9th Ward. Intrepid weathermen and Sean Penn provided some glimpses of Hurricane Katrina’s devastating impact; Trouble the Water visually submerges viewers in the midst of the tragedy. Scott and Kimberly Rivers Roberts survived the unnatural disaster and captured its most agonizing, yet almost pedestrian, images on camcorder. The footage is staggering due to their unmoored camerawork and the immediacy and intimacy of the couple’s vantage. These shocking snippets of pre-storm confidences and post-flood failures intercut with even briefer reminders of the White House’s inaction induce shame — a queasy understanding that so many fellow Americans were neglected and abandoned in their time of greatest need. The brilliance of co-directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal (along with cinematographer P.J. Raval) is that they allow the Robertses to tell their story their way, never editorializing and never showing up the amateur filmmakers by gussying up the presentation. Trouble the Water fulfills the promise of Walter Cronkite’s old news show: What sort of day was August 29, 2005? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times… and you were there.

— Warren Etheredge

America the Beautiful
Director Darryl Roberts
105 minutes
americathebeautifuldoc.com

On a scale of one to 10, Americans rate a… oh, hold on. That’s the whole problem. As a nation, we are obsessed with ranking our attractiveness, comparing ourselves with friends, loved ones and supermodels. It’s a simple, overwhelming problem but never has it been addressed with such clarity, breadth, depth and earnestness as it has by Darryl Roberts in his documentary, America the Beautiful. The filmmaker covers more social blemishes than Clearasil on a high school chess team. Wisely, he frames the cornucopia of related (and some very tangential) aesthetic concerns with the story of Gerren Taylor, a 12-year-old girl who broke into the modeling industry, quite literally, accidentally. The young beauty’s rags-to-runway-to-rags saga parallels our own insatiable craving for beauty and our inevitable failure to achieve this unattainable ideal, resulting in a snowballing self-loathing. Roberts could be faulted for intermittent navel-gazing, but that is an inherent and forgivable pitfall of the filmmaker-fronted documentary form. Luckily, one grows fond of his demeanor, thanks in large part to his narrative naivety and the sage, compartmentalized editing of Kurt Engfehr (who partially tamed Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11). America’s highlights include the shocking candor of magazine editors admitting to their rampant exploitation (their honesty may explain why many no longer hold their jobs) and the appalling bruit force of Dr. Steven Marquardt, a certified (and certifiable) Maxillofacial surgeon, who spouts more clichéd racist claptrap than Archie Bunker, Jesse Helms and Don Imus on a moonshine-fueled Klan retreat. (I needed an operation just to wire my dropped jaw back in place.) America the Beautiful ought be seen from sea to shining sea, but an R-rating may limit the audience that is most in need of viewing it. The film will prove redundant to the self-actualized and thoroughly enlightening to the young, the insecure and the media-saturated.

— W.E.

Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days
91 minutes
rawfor30days.com

I was bred and educated to be suspicious of quick, simple fixes and the people who promised them. Needless to say, when Simply Raw landed in my mailbox last month, wrapped in sleek packaging, its subtitle referring casually to something widely regarded as medically impossible, I grimaced. “Gimmick,” I thought. Simultaneously, I wondered “What if?”

The six diabetic subjects featured in this film must have felt that same sense of possibility when they decided to leave their lives — work, friends, family —to do thirty days hard time at Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center (under close medical supervision) in Patagonia, Arizona where they stuck to a raw, vegan, “live” organic foods diet under the watchful lens of the documentary camera.

While Simply Raw is similar to many reality television programs in which a group of Joe Citizen strangers are thrown together, this film differs because the subjects are not competing against one another — instead, they are extraordinarily supportive of each another. They do, though, compete fiercely and not always sportingly against themselves — their eating habits, their cravings and most notably, the deeply entrenched belief that their bodies do not and cannot produce normal amounts of insulin. The result is a powerful film that not only highlights the benefits of a raw food diet, which proponents have been begging the wider culture to recognize for decades, but the blood-sweat-and-tears difficulty to create change in one’s own life, even when the benefits are glaringly obvious.

— Eric Larson

Flow
Directed by Irena Salina
Oscillscope Pictures
flowthefilm.com

Blue Covenant
By Maude Barlow
(The New Press)

Wars, terrorism, the widening gap between the rich and poor, the weird weather, the warming planet, the commodification of everything — there is no shortage of political or environmental crises over which to worry in this 21st century.

No crisis, though, argues Irena Salina (director of Flow) and Maude Barlow (author of Blue Covenant) is quite so urgent and quite so inclusive of all the other crises — present or impending — as the global water crisis. With an abundance of expert and activist interviews and raw footage, Flow dutifully documents the crisis in its various aspects. It introduces viewers to the people and landscapes — not only in India and Bolivia and South Africa, but also in relatively affluent Michigan — that are affected by the emergence of a “world water cartel” — the handful of corporations who are quietly co-opting the earth’s most precious natural resource, something to which people have long believed all humans have a birthright, and selling it back to us for a profit, all the while claiming benevolence.

Barlow, from whose book, Blue Gold, Salinas was inspired to make her film (and who is a featured talking head in the film), has been a tireless proponent of “water literacy” for many years. Whereas Blue Gold sought to define the crisis, its urgency and its everyday implications, Blue Covenant goes a step further to recognize the growing number of individuals, communities and organizations who are committing themselves to resisting water commodification and developing new technologies to deliver clean water to those who need it most. The solutions Barlow discusses are the great strength of Flow as well, which brings them to life. From a UC Berkeley professor whose practical, simple and inexpensive water filtration system serves small villages in India to the Michigan citizens who shouted a Nestle water bottling plant out of town, it’s clear the water crisis is neither remote nor something we can ignore.

— E.L.

Music

Bronx River Parkway
San Sebastian 152
(Truth & Soul)

The first time you play through San Sebastian 152, you may ask: What year is this from — 1968, 1974, perhaps maybe even just past the heyday of salsa, the early ’80s? Some of the members of Bronx River Parkway wouldn’t flinch at this, especially lead vocalist Sammy Ayala, whose presence in the industry is five decades deep. Yet, their latest album was mostly recorded in 2005 in San Juan and features a collective of roughly 20 musicians from Puerto Rico and New York — the two epicenters of salsa tradition. While you’ll also find shades of bomba and rumba in the mix, the focal point is that percussive-oriented, horns-blaring dance music that has epitomized Latin music in America for nearly half a century. What makes this fine release stand out is not only the playing, but the production — the bass is unusually blessed, laying the horns back a bit, tempering the drums and making them crisp and sharp. This is what differentiates Bronx River Parkway from vintage salsa, even if they in every way retain that sense of legacy. It is tradition evolved, with minor tweaks and revisions, a brilliant album in every imaginable aspect.

— Derek Beres

Krishna Das
Heart Full of Soul
(Nutone)

Ever since his 1999 release, Live on Earth, kirtan artist Krishna Das has realized that the live show is where it’s at. His previous releases were solid, but none soared like the sound of the man with the stage set-up of harmonium, tablas, and voices. This is not to discredit the two fine albums he has since made with Rick Rubin, or his last studio recording, Heart Full of Soul — a set dedicated to his favorite deity, Hanuman. In fact, the warmth — the subtle inflections of his vocals, the crisp tones of the harmonium, the quick tabla snaps — evoked by live performance is the only thing missing on this latest two-disc recording. Heart Full of Soul features a dozen songs and revisits some classics in the Krishna canon. The 22-minute epic “Shri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram” is certifiably imprinted on the hearts of anyone that has ever sat with him, and the addition of the violins adds a nice touch. Also new in the ensemble is a live drum kit, which makes a sweet backdrop for the homage to Shiva, “Om Namah Shivaya.” And, keeping with his wishes to remain a Long Island boy at heart with a long history of rock ‘n roll, “Jesus on the Main Line” takes a bit of gospel into this devotional Indian song.

— DB

BOOKS

Polanski: A Biography
By Christopher Sandford
Palgrave Macmillan

Mark Twain calculated: “The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.” Of course, the wag hadn’t factored in those individuals who are crazy enough to willingly assume the role of lightning rods. Roman Polanski and his biographer Christopher Sandford are two such folks who dare earthbound strikes of potentially fatal static charge. Polanski survived World War II, then went on a cinematic rampage. His early films — most notably Repulsion, Knife in the Water and A Taste for Women — reflect a carnal kink, a vague sexist agenda — that provoked critics and would later seal his fate in the court of public opinion. Despite his talent and his tragedy — wife Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson gang in ’69 — Polanski’s conviction for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old branded him (rightfully?) as an out-of-control hedonist with as little respect for others as for the law. Mr. Sandford creates a compelling portrait of a thrill-seeker who may be accountable for his actions, but may have also been a product of his times and his equally lascivious movie-making mates. The author relies on previously unreleased courtroom documents and the testimony of colleagues to frame Polanski; however, Sandford’s previous bios raise concerns about the accuracy of his research. Can the man who infamously smeared Kurt Cobain and partially defamed others such as Mick Jagger, David Bowie and Steve McQueen be trusted to offer an honest appraisal of Chinatown’s auteur? Really, does it matter? Polanski plays in print like Rosemary’s Baby on screen, an edge-of-your bed page-turner with a devilish outcome. Beware, readers, when in Rome, do not do as Roman did. After all, lightning can strike twice.

— W.E.

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