A Few Movies for the Backpacker to Enjoy

This is a list I'm compiling for my friend and travel-partner, Tosca, to whom I promised to send a list of recommended movies for her to catch up on when she returns to the Netherlands in early May. Rather than spurt out any movie that struck my fancy, I decided to focus this list on films I liked that somehow relate to travel culture and/or South America. The list is by no means exhaustive, and I hope you respond with questions, comments, and suggestions of your own!

In no particular order:

1. Morvern Callar. After her boyfriend commits suicide on Christmas Eve, Morvern, played by the phenomenal Samantha Morton, quietly "disposes" of his body and embarks on a soul-searching journey to Spain. Sunglasses and Scottish accent in tow, Morvern's movements through the sun-scorched landscapes of Spain provide an ironic contrast to her displaced misery. Beautifully shot and sporting a great Euro-rock soundtrack, this movie for me explores some of the rawest emotions we experience when traveling alone and/or dealing with loss by traveling.

2. The Vanishing. Spoorlos is based on a classic Dutch novel, The Golden Egg. (Tosca told me she thinks she had to read it in school.) And indeed the film seems to me quintessentially Dutch in its treatment of a merry couple's summer vacation road trip to France. But when the girlfriend goes missing at a roadside rest-stop, her lover is left to wonder what could have possibly happened to her. His search ends a few years later when the French abductor -- a terrifyingly mild-mannered family man -- offers to show the lover exactly what happened to her. That the movie becomes more suspenseful the more we witness the abductor conducting his daily routine is a testament to its mastery of a basic theme: the horror of being confronted with the limits of our own knowledge.

3. Fitzcarraldo. After Aguirre, the Wrath of God, German director Werner Herzog made this film about a crazed European adventurer who has the absolutely daft idea of transporting a massive river boat over a mountain, from one tributary of the Amazon to another. The shock-blonde Klaus Kinski, himself a bit of the crazy man in real life, plays Fitzcarraldo, and you can see the mad vision playing out across his eyes. Niether an elite colonial nor a friend of the Indians, for me Fitzcarraldo is Herzog's definitive vision of the alienated European "wild man," a "savage" at heart.

4. Grizzly Man. Another Herzog film, this one his recent documentary on the life and death of Timothy Treadwell. Treadwell spent several summers living with wild grizzlies in the Alaska, and he shot over 100 hours of footage of his experiences with the animals. The documentary uses this footage and Herzog's interviews with people who remember Treadwell to reconstruct his self-sacrificing passion for the bears. Particularly commendable is Herzog's sensitive analysis of the decidedly background roles Treadwell's girlfriends played in his documentation of his experiences. Yet it was one of his girlfriends who perished alongside him in what we are only left to imagine was an utterly gruesome mauling one night in their tent.

5. Keep the River on Your Right. A fine documentary about Jewish American artist Tobias Schneebaum's "lost" years living with cannibals in Papua New Guinea in the 1960s. Schneebaum had gone missing from his safari group and had been presumed dead. When he emerged from the jungle years later, he claimed to have tasted the human flesh of conquered tribesmen. The documentary follows an elderly Schneebaum on his first trip back to Papua New Guinea, in the 1990s, as he reunites with the companions and (male) lovers who opened up their world to him over 30 years ago.

6. Black Orpheus. Marcel Camus' classic appropriation of the Orpheus myth, set in Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval. Pulsating samba music drives the movie onward, while the images capture a strange beauty in the city's festivities -- a beauty at once colorful and somber; the perfect stage for Orpheus and Eurydice's doomed love to play itself out. A little known fact is that the woman who plays Eurydice hailed not from Rio but from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

7. Nine Queens. A fun caper film set in Buenos Aires. The plot is fast-paced but not too rushed... and hey, who couldn't like a story that involves counterfeit stamps? There's even a smart reference to the economic crisis that crippled the country no more than a few years ago.

8. City of God. This frenetic, visually exciting film offers a unique perspective on the city´s infamous favelas: through the eyes of children and adolescents. These kids do lead vibrant, thought-provoking lives, and we are made to understand that their struggles are tied to circumstance rather than some inherent "culture of poverty."

9. Life and Debt. While not technically about South America, this documentary about the devastating toll IMF/World Bank policies have had on Jamaica's social fabric and economy, is worth seeing by any conscientious traveler to the global South.

10. 9 Songs. Michael Winterbottom's graphic tour-de-force of a young couple's summer fling is set against the backdrop of London's raging rock concert scene. There seems to be no end to the couple's passion for each other -- in every sex scene, it's as though they're discovering their bodies for the first time. Not about traveling per se (though the girl is American), but you have to believe these two are travelers at heart. Call it a modern-day Turkish Delight!