Dumbarton Bridge

Growing up in this part of the country, I was looking forward to a good film, but I was left feeling disappointed. The story was mediocre to say the least. I really tried to like it, but I just couldn't. The low budget-ness of the film really was saddening to me. This area of the Bay is truly mixed and I grew up with people who shared similar stories and any of them would have made a very good independent film. I wont delve too deep into the film because the previous review hit the nail on the head. It was a valiant attempt to tell a story, but taken the history of the area and the characters portrayed in the film, a better setting would have been Oakland or Richmond, CA. Too bad.

I found this a great disappointment, despite a fine jazz score and some excellent landscape cinematography. It's about John Shed, a black Vietnam veteran who is suddenly confronted by his past when the daughter he fathered and then abandoned in Vietnam suddenly arrives in the US. Shed's reaction is to sulk silently for most of the picture, as he fails to deal with the issues of his wartime past. The acting is sometimes poor, the script full of clichés (Including the mandatory scene where one character, disliking something he has heard on the phone, holds the receiver away from himself and stares at it. How often do you do that?) and the film's low budget origins are painfully obvious. Several scenes were spoiled by the boom being well in shot (though this was partly the fault of bad projection). The contrast between the lovely exterior shots and the banal interiors makes it look as if they're actually shot by two different people. Having a central character who is basically inarticulate is a recipe for a long, wearisome movie. At one point, Shed attends a sort of encounter group for black men, and as he speaks, talking about his wartime experiences, the film almost takes off - but then it fizzles out. Meanwhile the complex relationships between Shed, his white girlfriend, his daughter, and her Vietnamese friends and family, barely begin to be examined in this frankly dull film.

Dumbarton Bridge is a lyrical film which deals with many issues of timely relevance. As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war, many vets continue to deal with painful issues from that era such as substance abuse, reuniting of families created during that conflict and general identity challenges. Koppelman, through his well-casted and superbly scored film, touches on these issues with care, thoughtfulness and an eye and ear for the nuances of delicate human relationships.

The cinematography, while understated, is sensitive and creates the precise mood to accompany this moving first feature for Koppelman. I look forward to more from this filmmaker.

I saw this film at the Santa Barbara Film Festival and found it to be an impressive exploration of themes that are generally ignored in mainstream Hollywood cinema. John Shed, an African American Vietnam vet is forced to confront his past when his half-Vietnamese daughter arrives from Vietnam. The film manages to explore issues of racial relationships among Vietnamese, African Americans, and white people in America without being exploitative. Tom Wright -- a veteran of a number of John Sayles movies -- give an excellent portrayal of John Shed as a man wrestling with his internal demons. The film, which was shot in the San Francisco Bay Area, also looks great and the score (mostly jazz and some R&B) is well chosen and acute.

The film is definitely a mood piece and an exploration of character rather than plot driven and, in fact, several of the plot elements remain unresolved at the end. And, not all of the performances are as convincing as they could be. But, I would recommend Dumbarton Bridge as a thoughtful exploration of the interaction between personal and racial issues in modern day America.

A technical note here. It really is ridiculous to complain about seeing the boom in a scene of a film, and then admit in the next sentence that the film was not projected properly. Poor projection, increasingly common these days, is not the fault of the film-makers. I've seen "Dumbarton Bridge," projected properly, and I don't recall this being an issue at all. Let me state, for the record, that I worked on the film, so I guess it's fair to say that I'm inclined to be slightly sympathetic, but please: don't be negative about problems that have nothing to do with the film itself.