Review of Dancing on a Dry Salt Lake (2013) by Mrf39 — 20 Jan 2014

Spiritual journeys, like dreams or creative endeavors—painting, writing, moviemaking itself—.

Are not easy to portray convincingly on the screen, because they are by nature interior experiences; yet in Dancing on a Dry Salt Lake Dominique de Fazio has done a remarkable job of bringing us inside the head, and heart, of Warner De Santis, a NASA cosmologist who after a car accident becomes “shipwrecked” in the Mojave Desert. This vast, apparently empty, and windswept place, which at first seems bleak and forbidding, slowly begins to reveal its rich complexity to De Santis and to the viewer. We are equally compelled by the the landscape itself, with its secret spirituality, captivating light, and haunting sky, as by the people who have landed in the hardscrabble town of Trona, California. Here De Santis falls into stories within stories as he finds himself drawn into staging musical in a threadbare roadside café with a handful of local people as actors. Alternately sad and comedic, logical and absurd, Dancing on a Dry Salt Lake features an array of supporting performances that are so natural that they stay with you long after the movie has ended. This is a movie for anyone who is a seeker, or who responds to gifted acting, or who can feel wonder at the mystery of human quest, and connection.