‘Python Hunt’ Colorfully Explores Searching for Snakes in Florida

If there’s nothing else proved by Xander Robin’s documentary, “The Python Hunt,” it’s that Tobey Benoit is a multitasker of rare talent and inordinate fortitude. Toward the end of the film, we watch as the resourceful journalist and inveterate outdoorsman manages to talk on a hand-held telephone while driving down a desolate highway in the wee hours. Did I mention there’s a sizable python in his left hand tightening its grip? The python bites as well. By the end of the journey, Mr. Benoit’s guest has made mincemeat of his arm.Mr. Benoit, with his ample girth and omnipresent chewing tobacco, is unflappable. It’s a trait that serves him well. Forget meeting editorial deadlines or a big snake; he has a disgruntled client on his hand, Anna Stratton Hilts. She’s an 80-something retiree who is out to punch chits on her bucket list, chief among them being the pithing of a python. Pithing, we are told, is a humane manner of killing reptiles recommended by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. A sharp tool is forcibly inserted into the animal’s brain cavity — that is, after it has been rendered unconscious. You can imagine Ms. Hilts’ ire after having spent the better part of a week under Mr. Benoit’s guidance driving endless Florida backroads without having snagged a single python. They’re taking part in the annual Florida Python Challenge, a state-sponsored event in which citizens are encouraged to hunt down and euthanize the snake in question. Since the python’s inadvertent introduction into the Everglades, the country of Burma being its natural habitat, the animal has been thriving on and decimating fauna native to the state. Couching her mercenary mission in merciful terms, Ms. Hilts is intent on saving “Peter Cottontail.”Mr. Robin is a son of South Florida, a man for whom “lizards and snakes scurrying past my feet were a normal everyday occurrence.” Working with cinematographers David Bolen and Matt Clegg, he trains the cameras on a cadre of characters who have an abiding interest in the environment and a fondness for things that slither in the night. Messrs. Bolen and Clegg had their work cut out for them. Given the nocturnal nature of the python, much of the action takes place in the dark, to which they bring a welcome clarity.The travels and travails of Mr. Benoit and Ms. Hilts are only one of several stories filtering through “The Python Hunt.” Madison Oliviera is a sinewy ex-Marine whose computer-nerd boyfriend is aghast that she should be trawling the Everglades with a couple of muscle-bound locals. When one of the strong silent types starts to flirt, Ms. Oliviera is sober and strategic: “Men,” she states flatly, “can be trained.” Here is a lady not to be trifled with.Richard Perenyi is a high school science teacher from San Francisco and a “lifelong herper.” Notwithstanding a fascination with reptiles and amphibians, Mr. Perenyi’s biggest challenge in the Everglades is tonsorial. His bushy mane and beard undergo a series of alterations, not all of them wise. New Jersey-born Jimbo McCartney seems the most troubled of the personages with whom Mr. Robin spent time. He resents the incursion of outsiders to the life he’s carved out for himself in Florida’s boondocks, going so far as to pepper the wilds with fake pythons made with fabric and foam. Mr. McCartney’s bitterness is palpable, as is his loneliness.This accounts for why one of the most rewarding scenes in the film has Mr. McCartney teaming up with his 19-year old daughter, Shannon. Notwithstanding an awkwardness typical of the dynamic between a parent and an adolescent, the two of them are genuinely celebratory when they finally bag a python. “The Python Hunt” is an achievement as welcome as it is modest. If the greatest fault of Mr. Robin’s film is a scattershot approach to narrative, its greatest achievement is in accentuating the humanity within a range of people we might not otherwise have encountered.

‘Python Hunt’ Colorfully Explores Searching for Snakes in Florida

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