The Last Tourist (2021) Reviewed: Friday, 1st July, 2022.

 James Burgess - The Last Tourist (2021) Dir: Tyson Sadler – International Distributor: Utopia – Running Time: 100 mins.

1^st 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: * * * *