The nice thing about documentaries is that even if the video quality is horrible, the sound is off and the people being interviewed are the most disinterested people on Earth, you will typically walk away having learned something that you didn’t know before you walked in the theater. That rule somewhat goes out the window, however, when you watch a documentary about a Welsh teleporting musician in a red Power Rangers helmet touring South America in search of distant relatives.
In Seperado!, Gruff Rhys is said musician. As a child he saw a man playing Spanish guitar and singing in Welsh and asked his mother who he was. Her response was René Griffiths, who also happens to be Rhys’ distant uncle who moved to Patagonia years before. Strapping on above mentioned helmet, Rhys decides to start up a music tour around Brazil, Argentina and Chile in hopes of finding his remote relative.
The documentary’s biggest issue is that it is trying to get audiences to care about a very personal mission and goes about it in a very personal way. Prior to reading his name in the last paragraph has anybody actually heard of René Griffiths? (Seriously, if you have, leave a comment below). While he may be popular in Wales, it isn’t someone who is internationally known. What’s more, Rhys goes about finding Griffiths by talking to other distant relatives in the region who don’t have anything particularly interesting to say.
The movie tries to compensate for this by being exceptionally bizarre, and in some ways it works. I enjoy watching scenes in which an old man sings to a group of girls about moving to South America to grow longer carrots. The helmet that Rhys has chosen is far too big for his head, making the teleportation scenes only that much stranger. But at some point you begin to question whether Rhys and director Dyl 'Goch' Jones have a strange sense of self-expression or if they are just trying to be weird to keep the audience engaged in what is otherwise a boring film? The first 45 minutes are fun and I actually laughed out loud more than a few times, but just like a bad acid trip, the longer it goes on the more you want it to stop.
The movie wears many hats, examining music and history, but above all else this is a travel documentary. The problem? Those behind the camera don’t seem to grasp film as a visual medium. Sure, they found a good number of people to talk about the Welsh history in Patagonia, but the area is also quite beautiful, extending into the Andes Mountains. How do they show this beautiful landscape to the audience? Through the cracked windshield of a broken-down truck. You can’t make this stuff up.
Seperado! actually has a lot of things going for it – it’s quirky, the filmmakers seem to have a good sense of humor and the music is almost listenable. But the film itself drags on endlessly to the point that its absurdity becomes irritating and you just want to see Gruff Rhys meet René Griffiths so you can move on with your life.
For more coverage from the 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival click here.
