San Antonio Film Festival
As I discussed before, the unique feature about Bible Storyland was all about access. You had the feeling that this was a testing ground for films before they really made the big festival circuit. When I was waiting to get inside the screening for this movie, the DIRECTOR introduced herself to me, and even remembered my name a couple times later when I was being seated and during the post-screening Q+A. I cannot say how willing I was to dismiss some very minor imperfections in this movie when you were able to meet the person who put their passion on the screen. Not only was the director there, but the documentary's main protagonist, Harvey Jordan, an art dealer from Southern California whose obsession with finding out more about a failed religious theme park in the central drive of the movie.
Listening to the director's vision was interesting to me, though, because personally the most compelling idea in the movie (maybe it was the urban planner in me) was the failed attempt at creating a religiously-themed pseudo-utopia, with the accompanying interviews with historians commenting on what theme parks like Disneyland and Disneyworld were trying to achieve at the time of their creation. And if I have to say anything bad about the movie, that particular topic didn't have enough depth to sustain the whole movie. When the director said that that her film was really an exploration of Jordan's evolving obsession with Bible Storyland and his personal journey towards the acceptance of mortality I didn't really see it at first, and maybe it could have been less subtle.
As I think about it though, the connections fuse together. I think movies about individual obsessions come a dime a dozen, and if you followed every person around who had a pet hobby it would end up concluding the same way. Jordan follows through his interest in Bible Storyland through the very end, and one of the final scenes is really unique in tone. This is when Jordan presents his research and work on his obsessions to a group of elderly social club attendees who might have heard about the theme park plans in the 1960s, but now could barely care less. It seems like he is rather humbled by this experience and is able to move on with his life.
Again, I chose this film on a whim because it fit into my festival schedule. I had no idea who would be attending NOR that it was the world premiere of the movie. But now that I've met the people involved who were able to present their perspective on their own creation, Bible Storyland is now a more compelling and personal movie than I could have imagined.
No comments:
Post a Comment