"Resting Places" Review
Rating: 4
Resting Places
by KC Fringe Festival
"Resting Places" is an enlightening documentary about a specific cultural expression: the construction of roadside memorials. "Resting Places" is an engaging and wonderful tribute to an act of regionalism that is spreading throughout the world from the Hispanic Southwest that otherwise might have had its fifteen-minute treatment as "tackiness."
Some people may not understand why anyone would want to erect roadside shrines that commemorate the last place a person was alive before being killed in a car crash and the cultural expression of "descanso." "Resting Places" makes sense of what might otherwise seem a nonsensical cultural expression, describing with clarity what would drive someone to remember a loved one where they died.
At first, Villanueva's motivation felt unfocused: the idea of "Resting Places" seems foreign to her vision as a filmmaker. But what may have begun as a student film project becomes disciplined as she tells stories of sorrow, loss and hope, in contrast with roadside danger and legal efforts to ban roadside memorials, countering stories of loss with assertions of government duty to inhibit people from "destroying public property," with no clear bias. Villanueva leaves it to the audience to decide how they feel about roadside memorials. She uses stories from all sides of debate over the controversy surrounding roadside memorials, using her direction to guide and educate the audience. As a result, "Resting Places" ends up as homegrown expression of a cultural expression unfamiliar to people in the Midwest.
Villanueva is a local Kansas City filmmaker, using modest budgets and limited resources to turn out an enlightening documentary. Liam Neeson's narration gives the film added weight. "Resting Places" is an example of ethnography harnessed to a heart-wrenching story. Considering that the media usually smooth over the harsh realities of daily current events or filter them as a battleground of interests, this film carries us beyond ignorance and feels like homegrown enlightenment.
Matthew Frank
read the review at KC Stage
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