This is a hard film to review, or even to try and describe.
It´s like a plant growing from a seed, sprouting themes and meta-themes as events unfold,
The seed hat the film starts from is a man´s childhood fascination with an explorer/adventurer, and wish to do a trip his hero did 80 years earlier, and to look for the same "lost tribe". He embarks with a small film team, and a big naivete that may or may not be feigned (I believe it is genuine though, but I´m not sure).
It becomes messy, with several twists along the way. Always unpredictable, sometimes surprising. It´s not messy storytelling though, I believe, but the telling of a messy story.
On the grand scale this documentary could be described as a story of colonialism, told through the actions and interactions of certain individuals from both sides of the colonial dicotomy, stretching over a period of approx 80 years.
It´s in a sense a difficult watch, sometimes sad or painful, other times cringe. And I never know how much of that cringe is a deliberate means of storytelling, and how much of it is genuine white, colonial cluelessness.
And is that ambiguity in itself an artistic choice? Perhaps to tell such a complex story, one needs to be ambiguous?
And it´s not one story, of course. There are several stories intertwined. Fragmented. Sometimes brutally concrete, other times hinted. And the story of the purpose of the film changes as well. What is it about? Whom should it serve? Does it have a reason to be made?
It´s messy, because it´s messy. It´s cringe, because it´s cringe. Painful, because it´s painful. And there is also a sense of humor, but a weird, sort of tired and bitter, sense of humor.
It´s a really interesting piece of filmmaking, and I do recommend it.
