Review: Carts of Darkness

Director: Murray Siple
Producer: Tracey Friesen
MPAA Rating: PG
Running time: 63 min

Westcoasters may complain about the weather but ask anyone who has lived in Vancouver for any significant amount of time and they’re likely to agree that moving is out of the question. Sure there’s rain, high living costs, a mediocre transit system but to balance it off there’s the gorgeous mountains, access to world class skiing, kayaking, mountain climbing…all in the “back yard”. It’s no wonder so many folks on this side of the coast are obsessed with the outdoors.

Director Murray Siple was one of those guys. He’d been on the edge, participating in extreme sports and making skateboarding and snowboarding videos until a car accident ten years ago left him unable to walk and removed him not only from partaking in the sports he loved but also from making films. And then he met Big Al.

North Vancouver isn’t exactly slumming it. One of the pricier neighbourhoods in BC, the city is full of prized mansions and million dollar views but hidden amongst those riches is a group of roamers – individuals living on the streets, collecting bottles and participating in the most extreme of extreme sports: shopping cart riding.

Carts of Darkness shares many similarities with extreme sports films: high octane action, loud pounding music, crashes and war stories but there’s a much more intimate story at play here. This isn’t just Siple sharing with us the tragic and sometimes funny stories of some of these ‘free birds’, it’s also a film about himself and his self discovery and re-birth and where some documentaries might fail miserably at incorporating the film maker, Siple’s story feels genuine and all of stories and emotions within the film the culminate into an equally sad, heartwarming and exciting film.

Siple, with the help of his crew and cinematographer Christian Bégin, capture the beauty of Vancouver. Even when we’re following the guys into the bushes there’s a sense of awe at the surroundings. This is, after all some ones home and it’s to Siple’s great credit that he manages to connect with his subjects and capture the men candidly and intimately, giving us a sense of really knowing who they are and what makes them tick. Entwined in there is Siple himself, sharing bits about his story, and seeing him interact with these men one really gets the sense that he’s not fishing for a story but that he really feels some connection to these outlaws, men who are constantly breaking the rules. But I won’t kid you, I didn’t go into this film looking for a human story. I went in for the racing action and there’s plenty of that to go around.

We see the guys select their carts, dress for battle, pick their battle field and go at it like madmen. The cinematography puts you right in the action, seeing the houses and woodland pass by at inhumanly high speeds and the asphalt wiz by, almost as if it’s an altogether different surface. Keep in mind these guys are riding shopping carts (preferred brand: Safeway) and have nothing but their feet, and in some extreme cases, a car or bus, to stop them. In one pivotal leap of faith, we see the final ride inter-cut with extreme snowboarding footage and though the connection between the two is apparent even without the visual cue, the subconscious message under the surface is enough to make you cheer.

Gorgeously shot in HD, Carts of Darkness was not the film I expected. Like a tootsie pop it took my expectations and busted through the crust to show a rich, soft centre. It’s not easy to show these apparently trouble making outcasts as human and approachable and seeing the film that doesn’t appear to have been Siple’s initial intention, but intentions change and Siple took them in stride and the resulting film does just that: humanizes. It also doesn’t shy away from the delicate subjects of homelessness and alcoholism that continually plague Vancouver – all the while managing to be relentlessly entertaining. In short, Carts of Darkness is a must watch.

Links:
Official Site
MySpace Profile for Carts of Darkness