Darwin (2011)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1735335/

Darwin is a small town in California’s Death Valley that is inhabited by a mere 35 people, and those 35 people are as eccentric and fascinating as they come. Darwin used to be a prosperous silver mining town with a population of 3500 in the late Nineteenth Century but since the mine closed in the 1970s the population has dwindled and only people trying to escape problems and society seem to live there now. The town, if you can call it that, looks like a barren wasteland with a few trailers and rundown buildings. The pride and joy of Darwin is their recent trailer library which according to one resident, “I think we have all the books”. It is the real life characters featured in this intriguing documentary that make the film so strong, you couldn’t invent eccentricities better than these.
With no government involvement, apart from the disability and unemployment cheques most of the residents receive, no church and no children Darwin is pretty unique. They have their own aging water system and a post office that provides the only job in the town. We experience many of the residents talking about Darwin, how they ended up there and their thoughts on the town, most feeling privileged to live there. They bury the dead themselves and in fact run the town themselves, one particular town meeting hilariously showing the organisation of things and the small town politics involved.
We meet a variety of characters, ones that have lived there for years, such as an elderly miner, and ones that have moved there to escape the judgements of society, such as a transgendered female taking hormones. Brandestini obviously worked hard to gain the trust of these individuals as they confide to the camera and seem happy to have him around which is a big achievement as these are people that don’t want to be found, putting up signs such ‘No Services Ahead’ to avoid unwelcome visitors.
The film is divided into neat chapters, with some characters frequenting more than one chapter, their story developing as the film progresses. We learn of the history of Darwin, illustrated with historical photographs as well as the life stories and anecdotes the people of Darwin have to tell. Brandestini’s camera depicts Darwin in a beautiful poetic manner, lingering on the dusty landscape in unsaturated wide shots, each image like a photograph of Americana. The gorgeous shot compositions and use of aerial shots of the town are a visual pleasure in conjunction with the hilarity and humanity of the characters shown to us. Darwin is never mocking or derogatory towards these unusual people, it is affectionate and you can feel that Brandestini is just as captivated with this town as we the viewer are as we watch the situation unfold in front of our eyes.
Darwin is funny due to the great idiosyncratic characters but it does have serious undertones. The town’s only neighbour is a top-secret military base that the residents claim regularly test bombs, the evidence being billowing clouds of smoke nearby. There is an underlying sense of paranoia to Darwin emphasised by the belief of a lot of the residents that the end of the world is coming, as one resident stockpiles supplies for the occasion.
The only element I didn’t like about Darwin was the use of slow motion after the characters have revealed something of meaning; it felt like it was forcing poignancy upon the viewer and in my opinion was completely unnecessary and ruined the flow of the film. Apart from this Darwin is a riveting documentary, its characters are charming in a strange way and its story is fascinating. There is so much detail and depth to this film that I feel I want to revisit Darwin again and again.