Victoria

As an assessment of the possibility of realizing the American Dream, this documentary by Belgian filmmakers Sofie Benoot, Liesbeth De Ceulaer, and Isabelle Tollenaere is exceedingly pessimistic. Its setting could hardly be more depressing: California City, a master-planned community in the Mojave Desert a hundred miles north of Los Angeles.  Incorporated in 1965 with grandiose aspirations to become a second L.A., it never attracted a sizable population and now consists of fewer than 20,000 residents, its grid of paved roads crumbling and its infrastructure so decrepit that water main breaks regularly shoot what locals refer to as geysers into the air.  Acting as host in this portrait of the decaying ruin of a real estate man’s vision is Lahay Terrell Warren, a twenty-five-year-old Los Angeles man who moved with his family to California City in 2016 in search of a better life.  After being introduced recording a hopeful cell phone message to a friend back in L.A. shortly after his arrival, Warren reads haltingly from a diary he keeps over the next five hundred-plus days, his observations punctuating footage of his daily routine.  He goes for walks in the desert with his wife and children while trying to get his car to start, carrying a new battery across the windswept terrain.  He and his co-workers amble along the deserted streets, stopping to read an old map to get their bearings as they desultorily repair cracks in the pavement.  He and a girl, who voices an interest in black holes and the alternate worlds they might lead to, trudge to what appears to be a one-room high school to earn enough credits to graduate; they cross a golf course that appears to be one of the few amenities still functioning, and their classroom exercises consist of reading aloud from pioneer accounts about crossing the wilderness.  He and a friend help a woman whose motorized wheelchair has run out of electricity in the street and use their computers to call up glimpses of their old neighborhoods in L.A., and along with another woman he watches a turtle slowly crawling across the sand.  During a solitary walk after more than a year in the desolate place, Warren announces that he has begun renaming the local landmarks, including California City itself, which he ironically chooses to call Victoria.  Leaving behind an inscription for those who will come after him, he walks offscreen as the film ends.  Victoria is basically a bleak depiction of the existential angst afflicting many places and people in America, and though it tends to meander as much as Warren, it does build a certain cumulative power.  Optional.  Aud: P, C.