The Darien Gap

Running time: N/A

When you're broke, homeless, and alone, Boston can be an especially cruel place. Fantasy is the only fuel that keeps you going. It is that clash of fantasy and reality that drives the story of Lyn, a disaffected twenty-something whose life is just not working out at all. Literally living in a hole in the wall in a run-down section of the city, Lyn dreams of hitch-hiking all the way down to the bottom of South America, to Patagonia, where he will use his sole remaining possession of any value, his video camera, to document the existence of the legendary Giant Sloth and thus land a lucrative TV deal. All that seemingly stands in his way is his own inertia and the Darien Gap, an eighty mile wide swamp across the Pan American highway. But the actual, more immediate obstacles that block Lyn's path are far more complex:: a rich girlfriend with a disturbingly clear and self-assured vision of herself, and an estranged father who suddenly begins sending Lyn letters after an absence of nearly nineteen years. Using gritty black and white photography, The Darien Gap, pokes around in places that most of us would sooner leave alone. A fear of intimacy and commitment, the haunting resonance of abandonment, and the unwillingness to accept things as they are create an uneasy atmosphere of tension that is as palpable as it is unsettling. Complemented by a throbbing soundtrack of high energy songs, The Darien Gap artfully probes the destructiveness of assigning blame and the redeeming power of taking responsibility for one's own life. --P.D. Crane