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Bookmark this pageDarwin (2011)
Director: Nick Brandestini
Movie review
From Time Out Online
As a big fan of Death Valley, I couldn’t resist a doc about the inhabitants of one of the very few ‘towns’ (populaton now 35, though it was 100 times that in 1877) in that massive, famously inhospitable region. And just as remarkable as the mountains, dunes and seemingly endless roads are the Darwinites, a feisty, mostly unemployed and misanthropic lot, many of whom ended up there due to troubles with crime, drugs, sexuality and city living. Initially the frank interviews with the desert rats suggest the film might become a freak show (almost everyone here offers some sort of philosophical/religious credo, while one woman admits to ‘mixed’ feelings about former neighbour Charlie Manson), but the respectful, sensitive approach to people who, after all, are simply trying to survive means that, by the end, pretty much all of them come across, faults notwithstanding, as surprisingly likeable.Author: Geoff Andrew
Time Out Online London Film Festival 2011
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