‘Someplace With No Bridges’ Overview: Of Males and Reminiscences
Within the compact documentary “Someplace With No Bridges,” the director Charles Frank units out to place a heartbeat to a reminiscence. The film’s ostensible topic, Richie Madeiras, was 44 in October 1999 when he fell from his boat. Days later, divers pulled his physique from the water a couple of hundred yards off Martha’s Winery, the place he had deep roots, made lifelong pals and labored as a shellfish constable serving to to guard the island’s treasured pure assets. An area paper mentioned of Madeiras: “Family and friends say he was born to fish.”
The genesis of this documentary was the enduring affect that Madeiras’s dying had on family and friends, together with on Frank’s father, Dale. Charles Frank was nearly to show 5 in October 1999. “My household likes to joke that earlier than the age of 12, I don’t bear in mind something,” he says in voice-over quickly after the film begins. That isn’t true, he continues, because the digicam holds on a handsomely framed aerial shot of lapping ocean waves. He remembers how his father reacted to the lack of his shut pal.
“He stepped out of his automobile and collapsed into my mom’s arms,” Charles says, because the waves preserve coming and he methodically attracts out the phrases, as if from the deep. “It was the primary time I sensed that one thing was flawed, and it was the primary time I noticed him cry.”
This childhood reminiscence serves as a type of artistic assertion of intent and an emotional by way of line for “Someplace With No Bridges,” which seeks to discover Madeiras’s life and legacy by way of its many traces. This effort emerges piecemeal by way of a mixture of archival imagery, authentic interviews and supplementary materials, together with an incredible many shimmering magnificence photographs of the island and its residents, although primarily males, on the water. Very similar to the {photograph} of Madeiras that Frank develops in an old school chemical bathtub, the documentary tries to show a shadow right into a portrait.
That by no means satisfyingly occurs, partly as a result of Frank by no means figures out what story he’s making an attempt to inform: his, his father’s or Madeiras’s. Richie seems to have been a vividly charismatic, memorable determine, one who, a long time after his dying, his family and friends simply conjure up with tears and candy and rollicking reminiscences. He was robust, mischievous and will tackle a few guys at a bar all by himself. He cherished, and he was cherished in flip. But whilst Frank retains questioning and exploring, Madeiras and the complete sweep of his life stay as out of focus as this documentary, an essay and not using a coherent thesis.
The title “Someplace With No Bridges” refers to Martha’s Vineyard, which may solely be reached by way of boat or aircraft. It’s a beguiling, resonant title that begins to look significantly much less romantic or useful because the documentary evolves, deliberately or not, right into a portrait of a cloistered group of males who fish, hunt, speak and speak some extra, sometimes play ball and spend a number of time on the water. There are ladies right here, sure, however principally what you might be left with are males and their sorrow, notably that of Dale Frank, whose coronary heart nonetheless breaks for Richie Madeira and whose filmmaker son, Charles, clearly yearns to know why.
Someplace With No Bridges
Not rated. Operating time: 1 hour. Lease or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV and different streaming platforms and pay TV operators.