Motel

Filmmaker Christian Blackwood has an enjoyably open, intimate dialogue with the wonderfully charismatic owners of three motels in New Mexico, Arizona and Death Valley. Motel is one of the most moving, passionate, innately fascinating documentaries I have had the pleasure of revisiting in quite some time. Many of the colourful stories herein are vividly recounted, and the lyrical final segment at the almost otherworldly Amargosa Hotel and Opera House is an aesthetic triumph. There's one exquisite sequence wherein the talented artiste Marta dances elegiacally though the more dilapidated areas of the hotel, which remain hauntingly beautiful. Christian Blackwood's soothing presence is wholly benign, his soft, kindly, politely inquisitive tones recall Herzog, in fact, I honestly feel that Blackwood's never less than delightful 'Motel' has a spirited Herzogian soul to match its enormously humane heart.