That's the final observation from private detective Harold Palladino (an Oscar-worthy --- in a just universe --- performance by David Yow) at the conclusion of A Desert, short and video director Joshua Erkman's feature length debut. That's true of the film itself at the start, which you're best going blind into, because like the tunnel of time itself, what's waiting at the end is sometimes best kept in the dark.
A Desert opens on two exquisitely shot sequences with art photographer Alex Clark lurking around an eerily abandoned cinema and then a deserted military barracks in the Yucca Valley. The composition, pacing and eye for odd details do justice to Erkman's and his DP Jay Keitel's meticulous lens and clue you in that nothing you are seeing is unintentional or meaningless, just as the excerpt of James Landis' 1963 B-flick from hell, "The Sadist," playing in all its slobbery glory on the motel room of the antagonist Renny and his girlfriend Susie isn't random either, if not a bit spot-on.
Alex is a man out of time, ditching his devices for a full-on analog road trip with a gorgeous Deerdorff 8 x 10 camera in tow, until he meets up with Renny at a fleabag motel and things go sideways.
If this all sounds vaguely familiar in a noiry/ Lynchian kind of of way, it is, until it's not. A Desert shares those sensibilities, but what lifts it into stratas you don't expect to visit are the performances, all of which are as phenomenal as Yow's. Kai Lennox and Sarah Lind, in particular, as Alex and his wife Sarah, are so natural and poignant that they ground you and unexpectedly trap you into facing the carnage that follows with a hyper-immediacy that the film as a whole doesn't always earn.
Erkman really shot for the stars with this one, metaphorically and literally. There are plenty of flashbacks and circular arcs that sometimes work beautifully and some that simply dangle, like the alluring still of blank theater screens that pervade this film, haunting you with kinder universes than the one we're ultimately left with.
Proceed at your own risk with A Desert... it's not a knock-off genre film or a quickie-watch by any means. But if you like being surprised, shocked, or just enjoy really innovative film making and beautiful images, you'll find plenty here to enjoy on multiple viewings.
