James Burgess - The Last Tourist (2021) Dir: Tyson Sadler – International Distributor: Utopia – Running Time: 100 mins.
1st
July, 2022.
If you’ve turned on the news within the last few months, you don’t have to channel-hop too long before encountering yet another hot-button story: the latest round of airport chaos, due to horrendous queues at security, and a woefully understaffed amount of personnel.
It’s one of several all-too familiar
scenarios, covered in director Tyson Sadler and producer and contributor Bruce
Poon-Tip’s, absolutely fascinating, ever-timely, excellent and unbelievably
powerful chronicling of the – at present - very conflicted and deeply
pressurised, tourism industry.
Not at all shying away
from potential pitfalls as well as timeless glories of holidaymakers experiences,
it’s essentially doubling up as both a twin-edged cautionary tale, as well as
vitally important testament, to customer responsibility; showcasing and
foregrounding a rich compendium of cultures, people, community and commerce –
and above all the urgent need for a mutually established dialogue of respect, balance,
sustainable intervention, and all of the inhabitant’s welfare - in the face of
a great, and far too frequent variety of adversity.
From the stunning island vistas of Thailand’s
pearlescent, azure waters of Koh Phangan – turned effervescently on its head as
the sun sets, for its annual whirligig Full-Moon Party – to India’s
desolation of great poverty – it’s a superbly constructed, visual tour-de-force
– running its own absolutely crucial, uniquely inimitable gamut - between tourism’s
various facets of celebration, tribulation and isolation.
What’s particularly striking throughout
this unbelievably astutely executed documentary; is the sheer scale of the
global outreach of the travel and tourism industry itself.
Once March 2020’s global
pandemic hit; what once served as a colossal source of international revenue
was gone. Documentary’s use of found footage succeeds in immersing the audience
within the bigger picture with an immediacy that narrative fiction can never hope
to replicate. Brilliant panoramic graphics, illustrate virtual maps, cataclysmically
changed irrevocably, by the fact that profit margins were instantly eradicated,
substituted for even greater infrastructural losses, which preceded to shut down
an entirely international industry, overnight.
Special mention should also go to
cinematographer Stephen Chandler Whitehead, who captured over 400 hours of
footage with stunning high-definition cameras. The results are simply
incomparable.
It’s the incidental
imagery that endures the most; those unexpectedly mundane, peppered moments of
gentle humour. A favourite is a produce salesman on a moped, who, in
transporting just a few too many bananas, comically topples over - as do his
deliveries – all in the name of enthusiastic dedication!
The elephants are the undisputed stars of this
particular show, both figuratively and in a way that is shockingly literal.
Documented in conditions of both magisterial tranquillity and unbearably
abusive hardship – all for the function of supposed ‘entertainment’. These
segments of overt animal cruelty are especially affecting, and often extremely
difficult to watch. But, that just makes them all the more necessary, because
most mass audiences, simply might not know this unacceptable maltreatment
exists, whether it be animal, child or the wider human populace.
What’s so interesting,
is that it seeks to shine a light on those unsung heroes within tourism - from underpaid
waitressing staff, to native loom-weavers. Thankfully, documentaries as great
as this, don’t only raise awareness, but by extension, act as a positive force
for change – without ever resorting to a lecture.
Inventive shot
selection, ranges from voyeuristically high-angled, parasol-strewn beaches,
bathed in perpetual custard-bowl-yellow sunshine, to milk-white waterfalls discovered
within pockets of near-complete isolation. Chandler Whitehead’s image is always
pin-sharp in its clarity - and uncompromisingly clear in its cultural, social
and economic messaging. Meaning, messaging that’s not just framed in the form
of social media – although its dominance of democratisation is shown too – to
fantastic effect. The ubiquitous bubble of instantaneously obtaining
affirmation; through the snapshot of a photograph, or the millennial Insta-generation’s
unrelenting appetite for self-documenting a ‘like-and-subscribe’ culture -
could potentially, be doing tourism as much disservice, as favour. ‘Has
travel lost the plot a little?’ one contributor asks. ‘Are we going on
holiday, just to take that one perfect shot?’ another poses, presciently.
Already winning deserving accolades, including
The Grand Jury Prize at The 2021 Calgary Film Festival, it deserve as widely theatrical
and cinematic a release as it can. These stunning locations really do need to
be seen on the biggest screen possible.
Throughout, it proves terrifically
to achieve the very rarest of plaudits for a documentary: never taking sides.
It neither idolises, nor is detrimental to, its often hard-hitting subject
matter. Never feeling like a didactic diatribe, it is instead a sumptuously
hypnotic, assuredly comprehensive treatise, on the constantly juxtaposed
antithesis between leisure, pleasure, legality, entertainment, economy, preserved
connectivity and the immeasurable value of just how far simple acts of kindness
can reach, within our often fractured, but also globally enriched - sense of community.
Travelers changing their collective mindset in
order to treat other cultures with mutually professional respect, is this
piece’s core value – and it’s beautifully distilled both in its visual language
and it’s vocalised opinion. ‘Travellers are pollinators. Travel shouldn’t
just be about you, but about what you can offer’. Insightful quotes such as
these, sum up this film’s essence, perfectly. Charting an emotional trajectory
from unspoiled paradise to polluted chimera, it’s impactfully strong lesson, remains
one of balancing the quests for optimum user-experience, sustainability and
accountability – with an aim for these to co-exist as harmoniously as possible.
The soundtrack also
helps greatly, with Heidi Webster’s hopeful end credits parable: Wander, adding
to the concluding, but rarely conclusive, sense of optimism.
Long may documentary; a
fascinatingly difficult and vastly underappreciated genre - continue to help
tourism, by not least making many more films every bit as brilliant, necessary and
memorable as this one.
Rating: * * * *
