A Desert

“Desert creatures will meet with hyenas, and wild goats will bleat to each other; there the night creatures will also lie down and find for themselves places of rest” – Isaiah 34:14.

It’s a quote from the New International version of the Bible, taking a few liberties with the original text but in that regard all the more appropriate for the film in which it appears. There is a peculiarly US take on the desert imaginary that reflects the country’s founding myths, Ancient Hebrew tales filtered through the gaze of John Ford and Robert Harmon and sown with guilt, with the memory of genocide and the never-fading fear of what might lurk on the margins, dreaming of revenge. Even before Europeans arrived on that continent, there were tales of wild people living out in the badlands. Wildness, however, has a certain appeal to civilised people. Deserts everywhere have a romantic quality – especially for those entranced by emptiness.

There’s a photograph on Alex and Sam’s bedroom wall of an empty drive-in movie lot with a blank screen. Lying in bed and looking at it, Sam (the ever impressive Sarah Lind) likes to imagine what film is playing. Alex (Kai Lennox) used to take a lot of photographs of abandoned places; that’s how he made his name. Now, after years of more commercial work, he’s trying to get back to his roots. he calls her in the evenings from motel rooms. he has no mobile phone with him, no GPS locater; he’s off the grid, shooting on film with an old-fashioned camera, hoping that in the emptiness he can rediscover himself. Along the way he happens to take a shot of an old man and it occurs to him that he should take more pictures of people.

Empty, abandoned people?

A Desert is a film of two halves. In the first, Alex meets two strangers who ask him to take their photograph. In the second, Sam meets a man who has secrets. Several of the characters seem to be looking for redemption. Sam just wants to fill in the blanks. Co-writer/director Joshua Erkman tempts viewers to do the same, to reach out with their imaginations and try to make sense of unknowable things. Some things exist beyond reason, even within ourselves. Alex makes a disgusted face when he first tastes the firewater, but he lets himself be persuaded, again and again, to have a little more.

There’s a fantastically unhinged performance in here which it would be a spoiler to say much about. Everyone is good at what they do. Erkman, moving into features for the first time, shows remarkable confidence, framing his shots and narrative with equal precision, already understanding the rules well enough to break them. Long, slow sequences are balanced by flashes of action which unbalance everything. Shapes shift back and forth in the darkness. There’s a howl that might recall a hyena, but rest will only come one way.

Reviewed on: 30 Apr 2025