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Loot review
:. Director: Darius Marder
:. Genre: Documentary
:. Running Time: 1:28
:. Year: 2008
:. Country: USA
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Darius Marder's documentary Loot follows Lance Larson, a treasure hunter who is determined to help a couple of World War II veterans get a hold of their buried treasures, even if it involves flying to Austria and the Philippines, solely based on the blurry memories of the two men.
Those who are expecting some Indiana Jones/Mummy/National Treasure type adventure will be disappointed as Mr. Larson is just a family man living in a desert suburb. Far from the clichés associated with treasure hunters, he is a rather gentle, patient and naïve guy who shares his time between his passion, his home-based businesses and his family, including a teenage son struggling with a drug problem.
Watching Loot, it is obvious that real-life treasure hunting isn't as glamorous as we are shown in movies. It involves having a lot of patience, looking through piles of junk for documents, acting as a baby sitter for a couple of old guys, spending hours listening to stories to find some clues, etc …
While the father and son relationship is clearly a center theme here as Mr. Larson's relationship with his son and these two momentary paternal figures are put in parallel, Loot is too messy and subjective to bring any type of satisfaction, which is entirely owed to writer/director Darius Marder's lack of narrative direction.
To his admission at the Q&A following the screening at the LA Film Festival, Mr. Marder's goal was to film the failure of Mr. Larson's hunt and, even if you were not aware of this, you could sense that the film is filmed with a condescending angle, which neither gives the characters nor the hunts a chance for success.
Mr. Marder either doesn't know when to stop filming, which results in a documentary being all over the map when it comes to themes, none of them going anywhere because he is a passive documentarian who refuses to interpret or analyze what he sees. This is particularly obvious at the moment when he comes close to taking his story in an exciting new direction. As we listen to Mr. Larson talk with the veterans, we realize that one of them was involved in murders to protect his treasure while the other one took part in murdering prisoners of war. While it might be understandable that Mr. Larson doesn't want to ask too many questions, it is certainly the role of the filmmaker to dig up the truth to try to learn more and confront these guys with their demons. Instead, Mr. Marder stays in the shadow of Mr. Larson, keeping his mouth shut and failing in his role of documentary filmmaker.
What could have started with a simple treasure hunt-turned-unexpected film about guilt and history prefers to satisfy itself with a risk-free lack of purpose.
Fred Thom
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