Darius Marder’s Documentary: A Search for Buried Treasure (original) (raw)

Movie Review | 'Loot'

Treasure and Memory Hunt

Lance Larson, left, and his son Michael Larson in “Loot.”Credit...Darius Marder

Dec. 3, 2009

In the engrossing, exasperating, exquisitely shot documentary “Loot,” a search for buried treasure becomes an unlikely trigger for emotional catharsis.

Moving from a jungle in the Philippines to an Austrian field at twilight, the film tags along with Lance Larson, a Utah car dealer and human magpie. “He’s into lots of different stuff,” says his son, Michael, one of which is treasure hunting. Five years earlier, he had spent around $100,000 searching, unsuccessfully, for supposedly buried Japanese gold.

When we meet him, he is befriending two unrelated World War II veterans; each claims to know where goodies have been stashed. Unfortunately, the clues are buried alongside memories so troubling that they should probably never be excavated.

“It’s a weird coincidence, right, you knowing both of them?” asks the director, Darius Marder, as his subject travels back and forth between informants. But the old men have more than Mr. Larson in common, including long-suppressed recollections of a more violent time.

These drive the film in unexpected directions and its director in circles, but the narrative’s frustrating lack of focus is a large part of its charm, an organic embrace of life’s unpredictability. When, in that Austrian field, a former United States soldier and a onetime member of the SS bond over an American show tune, what began as a treasure hunt has transformed into a meditation on conscience, memory and the terrible legacies of war.

LOOT

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Produced, directed and edited by Darius Marder; directors of photography, Anson Call and Mr. Marder; music by Max Avery Lichtenstein. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. In English and German, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. This film is not rated.

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