Isle de Jean Charles (2014) User Reviews

Elegy for a vanishing paradise

[p_radulescu · 8/10 · 19 August 2014]

"Families have lived there for generations, making their livings on the surrounding waters. Time moves more slowly there, and a person's sense of home, family and community is deep-rooted." (NY Times)

Isle de Jean Charles is a tiny place deep in the bayous of South Louisiana. From the beginnings it has been an incredible realm of biodiversity. It is now a vanishing island, the scene of an ecological drama. Each hurricane brings narrower the moment when this island will be swallowed by the Gulf of Mexico. The effects of climate change are disastrous everywhere. Here they are just obvious.

An op-doc published in NY Times explores the dramatic realities of this island. The text is along with a ten minute movie. I would name it a great cinematic experience: an elegy for a disappearing paradise, told with dignity and restraint by its inhabitants.

Professionally made but, some aspects aside, it does feel overly familiar

[bob the moo · 25 October 2014]

The Isle de Jean Charles is a place in Louisiana where each year rising sea levels and coastal erosion is seeing more and more of the island lost to the water. The film looks at two residences who still live there, even as the town and the very land itself leaves them behind. In doing this, the film manages to create a nice air of desolation; the empty properties, the gradual loss of the land and, in some way, a threat of a loss of self too. This theme is what makes the short film work where it does, and it is a shame that it is not something it pushed more.

The idea of the two men not leaving but yet accepting the loss of what they have always known is well presented but is too softly done and other things, more common things, tend to edge it out. Specifically this is the fact that the image of washed out homes in southern USA, and the usual parade of people saying 'I lived in this house and I'll die in this house' and so on, well all of this is sadly very familiar and as a result this film often feels like it has little new to say. And it doesn't because the interviews don't really probe but instead leave it to the camera and music to get some good atmosphere and shots.

The short running time means we have no time for the science or more detail either, so again another reason why to drive into that thread of land/identity and drag it out would have made a better film. The mood and the tone still works, and it is professionally made, but it is just a shame that outside of a few aspects, it does feel very much like we have heard this story and seen these people many a time before, albeit in a slightly different context.