Because ‘Happy Campers’ Avoids Grandstanding, It Is a Political Film in Only the Best Sense

Few things narrow aesthetic reward more thoroughly than politics. The byways through which works of art are created and how they are experienced can be stunted — not irrevocably but to distressing effect — by ideologies of any stripe. The free-standing authority by which a novel or a poem or a painting or a film thrives depends on its ability to transcend circumstance. The latter is telling, but it is not the end-all and be-all of art.All of which is a roundabout way of pointing up how readily political motivations can be ascribed to a given object. Documentarian Amy Nicholson, whose film “Happy Campers” will be playing for one week at Manhattan’s IFC Center, has some definite notions about a lot of things, not least “the relentless march of capitalism,” the emotional limitations of “the well heeled crowd,” and the withering of “America’s collective soul.”In the accompanying press notes, Ms. Nicholson speaks of childhood summers spent with family at Chincoteague Island at the eastern shore of Virginia. Upon revisiting the island as an adult, she took note of the Inlet View RV Park, a ramshackle enclave consisting of “rows of boarded-up micro houses on wheels.” Curiosity prompted Ms. Nicholson to move into Inlet View and garner a sense of who its residents might be and what kind of community had been created by them.“Slumming” is what this type of thing is usually called, and when Ms. Nicholson waxes enthusiastic about how the working class denizens of Chincoteague Island “demonstrated perfectly how you can live in a leaky old camper, with few creature comforts … and be truly happy,” she risks sentimentalizing individual lives for the sake of political grandstanding. What could a filmmaker glean from roosting amongst, as one notable personage had it, a “basket of deplorables?”Cathy and Jake in ‘Happy Campers.’ Via Grasshopper FilmThat ill-considered bon mot sticks in the craw as much as it does in memory, and you’d best believe the good citizens of Inlet View are wise to its condescension. The blessing of “Happy Campers” is how it deflates elite opinion. Ms. Nicholson’s picture is a barefaced meditation on the inequities of capitalism, yes, but it is also an homage to the indomitability of the human spirit.Sounds corny, right? But corn is a liability only when it is absent from the truth. The people whom we meet at Inlet View don’t put on any airs, though some do goof around in front of Ms. Nicholson’s camera. Most don’t, however, and, for the most part, “Happy Campers” is more verite than not. The picture is a heartfelt cataloging of individuals who have, through choice and by chance, become close.The first people we see in the film set the tone: an older couple sitting under an umbrella in their beach chairs. The wife attempts to speak, “Well, you’re probably going to make me cry….” Whereupon some semi-exasperated back-and-forth commences between two people who know each other well and whose love for each other is plain to see. The scene is less than a minute in length. It is uproariously funny and tremendously moving.Ms. Nicholson wisely lets her players define the parameters of their participation and, much to a viewer’s annoyance, doesn’t provide subtitles in naming them. Be that as it may, we meet a host of people — most of them older, but younger generations are present as well — whose lives have taken as many turns as you might expect. Listening to one woman speaking to the wants, needs, and passing of siblings and friends is to realize that “Happy Campers” is a political film in the best sense — one that underscores, with tenderness and humor, the temporary nature of our time on this planet.

Because ‘Happy Campers’ Avoids Grandstanding, It Is a Political Film in Only the Best Sense

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