Stephen McNeal
Review Writing
Dharma Bums Down
180° South: Conquerors of the Useless: a documentary about one man, Jeff Johnson,
recreating the 1968 journey of the founders of North Face and Patagonia, Doug Tompkins
and Yvon Chouinard, to the Patagonia region of Chile. Or is this a documentary about
conservation efforts in South America, the need to live more simple lives, end commercial
fishing, and stop damming rivers? Maybe this isn’t so much a documentary but beautiful
pictures and videos set to a coffeehouse radio station? A little bit of me thinks this is all an
elaborate marketing scheme. ‘Lets take a group of guys, deck them out in our apparel and
have them climb mountains and surf and save the world. Don’t be too obnoxious with it
though, maybe have the label a little folded so you can only make out the P, T, NIA,
excellent.’
This documentary is a little of all of those things, in eighty-five minutes. Jeff’s gentle
voice with a slight California lilt guides us through the film starting in Mexico where he has
arranged to be a crewmember on a boat heading south. Somewhere in the middle of the
Pacific the boat’s mast snaps and the crew is forced to salvage what they can and motor to
Rapa Nui (Easter Island). This delays the adventure, but don’t worry, on this tiny island we
pick up Mahoke, a native woman who accompanies us the rest of the way. After spending
Christmas on Easter Island the boat’s makeshift repairs are complete and we’re that much
closer to fulfilling the Jeff’s goal of making the second ascent of Corcavada, a volcano deep
inside Patagonia.
Jeff and Mahoke stay with Doug Tompkins on the Conservacion Patagonica, a piece
of land larger than Yellowstone that Doug has purchased to protect from the Chilean
Government. The whole thing could very well have been a James Cameron film with a
spritzing of patchouli. A Woody Harrelson look-a-like jumps on a boat heading south.
Shipwreck. Love interest found on convenient island. Love interest tags along. Sage old men
share knowledge and drink yerba mate for days. At some point there are hundreds of
people on horses marching on the capitol.
This, however, is not something rung out of the Hollywood rag. A compelling
discussion of environmental concerns weaves throughout the journey. The film tackles
conservation on many fronts—land use, commercial fishing, and air quality—and does a
good job of breaking issues down into digestible bites. Often times animated drawings take
over a beautiful landscape to show what the proposed factories or dams will look like. You
don’t need to be in greenpeace to appreciate what they’re fighting for, nor do you feel
compelled to sign up and stare down a commercial fisherman in a dingy. It’s a nice
balance—awareness, education, and entertainment. My only conservation qualm comes
from a very natural stopping point on top of a mountain that instead of ending moves on to
introduce a new aspect of Chilean conservation efforts—this is where the horses come in.
Very late in the documentary this new topic emerges and you find yourself ready for the
credits.
The footage of surfing, bushwhacking through dense forests, and climbing over
snow and crumbling rock, however, could be played on a loop and watched over and over
in bliss. What has the potential to look something like The Blair Witch Project, actually
captures the beauty of each place visited. The camera work is phenomenal and no ones
breath fogged the lens; images are clean, the scenes flow smoothly one to the other, and the
plot is compelling throughout. The great accomplishment of this documentary is
maintaining all of those viewer-pleasing qualities while maintain an organic feel and
staying true to the events and people. The soundtrack makes you feel like you’re in a jeep
with surfboards on the roof. The Music of Jack Johnson, Ugly Cassanova, and James Mercer
fade in and out of the background nicely tying off scenes and allowing for moments to
marinate.
There is a marketing element to all of this—the financial backing comes from
Patagonia and Kashi. While I never saw anyone eat a kashi snack bar—which from my
experience of said bars makes sense—the Patagonia logo felt like the recurring image in
one of those children’s book. While Yvon Chouinard still heads Patagonia, Doug Tompkins
left The North Face and the business world in 1989 to focus on environmental activism.
Clothing, gear, and food sales may have benefited from this documentary, but the clear
focus remains on the people and conservation not their apparel and diet.
At times it feels like a bunch of folks with itchy sweaters and itchier beards trying to
do too much in an hour and twenty-five minutes. The narrative dips into fortune cookie
wisdom here and there and toes the line between pithy and cliché. There is kinesthetic
reaction to all of this; you may find yourself with one arm in a shoulder strap of your
backpack ready to get off the couch. You don’t feel like you’ve been sitting through a lecture
and it doesn’t feel like learning, as so many documentaries have a terrible tendency to do.
After watching the film I knew I enjoyed it, I knew I would tell friends to watch, and I knew
that I couldn’t exactly be able to give them a coherent account of 180° South; they would
just have to watch it.