Saw Vernon, Florida, an Errol Morris film. His documentaries are tough for me. They usually have no agenda and are not seeking to educate except in the broadest sense. They defy easy categorization and that makes them fairly puzzling. This time we're interviewing the retired and bored inhabitants of the tiny town of Vernon, Florida. They talk of wild animals and god. Probably the best sequences are those with a wild turkey hunter who speaks lovingly and lyrically of his times hunting turkeys. There is also an old man who freely associates from stars to the future to politics. There is an old couple near the end who talk of sand which they possibly believe is actually alive. A preacher has a rambling, pointless sermon about the exact definition of 'therefore,' a word which appears "over 119 times" in the bible.
Apart from slightly ugly hick gawking (which I may be more guilty of than Morris,) I don't know what this film is doing. This could be used to discuss the simultaneous adulation and condemnation of small-town America, but I don't think that that was it's purpose specifically. This film is like a tree in a forest, complete and functional but without point or reason. It's a kind of pleasant meander while it lasts, I just wish I could penetrate it a bit more. I'm confused.
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