{"id":16028,"date":"2011-10-23T17:46:55","date_gmt":"2011-10-24T01:46:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=16028"},"modified":"2011-10-24T07:08:47","modified_gmt":"2011-10-24T15:08:47","slug":"darwin-nick-brandestini-2011-switzerland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=16028","title":{"rendered":"Darwin (Nick Brandestini, 2011): Switzerland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy<\/a>.\u00a0 Viewed at the Ojai Film Festival, Ojai, CA.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 There’s an old mining town out in the Mojave Desert, near Death Valley, California known as Darwin<\/a><\/em>, which boasts of 35 residents, contains a fully operational U.S. Post Office, and is named after Dr. Darwin French; a medical doctor turned prospector who went searching for silver in the mid 1800’s.<\/p>\n

Silver was eventually discovered\u00a0near Darwin towards the late 1800’s, about the same time the\u00a0Post Office was built,\u00a0and by this time the town housed saloons, brothels and a hotel,\u00a0while the population grew to about 3000.\u00a0 Over time, as the mines tapered out,\u00a0so did the population, thanks to a couple of fires that swept through the town.\u00a0 Darwin then\u00a0became somewhat of\u00a0the ghost town it is today, with the current population consisting of artists, ex-cons, and individuals on the lam from big city life.<\/p>\n

Brandestini’s film is broken up into several chapters which introduce us to a variety of characters, such as\u00a0the couple that are practicing paganists.\u00a0 Chapter III, “Even After Death,”\u00a0 mentions an elderly poet named Greville Healey, who prior to\u00a0his death in 2003,\u00a0was forced to live in an old water tower because he had risked the town’s safety, by twice burning down his former abodes.<\/p>\n

Some of the\u00a0residents are conspiracists, and lead the filmmaker to a secret overlook where they are able to spy on a dubious military base.\u00a0 Others boldly and brazenly practice their Second Amendment rights, suggesting their disputes are still settled much as it was in the old west, and then brag about the cops being “afraid to enter Darwin.”<\/p>\n

Chapter IV, “Water and Power,” stars Michael Laemmle as chairman of the town’s utility board, who is also a nephew\u00a0of renowned Universal Studios founder,\u00a0Carl Laemmle.<\/p>\n

Although the chapters\u00a0are metered out as\u00a0short stories,\u00a0they tend to fall flat, leading nowhere – we are only given a glimpse into the\u00a0more\u00a0telling backgrounds\u00a0of Greville Healey, Michael Laemmle, and Darwin French – too much time is spent on exposing the diverse personage and their idiosyncrasies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The film does capture the rugged, but beautiful landscape, and would perhaps appeal to those interested in California history or\u00a0\u00a0its topography.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy.\u00a0 Viewed at the Ojai Film Festival, Ojai, CA. \u00a0 There’s an old mining town out in the Mojave Desert, near Death Valley, California known as Darwin, which boasts of 35 residents, contains a fully operational U.S. Post Office, and is named after Dr. Darwin French; a medical doctor turned prospector who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-documentary","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16028\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}