The Road to Patagonia: A love letter to the world we live in
The Australian documentary The Road to Patagonia is a simply told, beautifully filmed story centred on two people who believe we need to recalibrate our relationship with the natural world.
The Australian documentary The Road to Patagonia is a simply told, beautifully filmed story centred on two people who believe we need to recalibrate our relationship with the natural world.
It starts with a bold travel plan. Australian ecologist Matt Hannon, depressed with white-collar city life, decides to surf the west coast of the Americas, from Alaska to Patagonia in South America.
He’s in his late-20s and wants to reconnect with a place as he did when he lived with shamans in Sumatra, Indonesia. He flies to Alaska, builds a surfboard-sized sidecar for a motorbike and the 50,000km trip commences.
In Canada he meets Heather Hillier, a permaculture farmer, and a friendship-romance begins.
Setbacks strike on a personal and logistical level. They decide to ditch the motorbikes and complete the trip on horseback.
The four horses are the quiet stars of this movie. They are beautiful, both in body and soul. One of them wants no truck with carting a surfboard.
In a film that respects the spirit of animals, it is an unplanned comic moment.
Hannon is the director. There is no film crew. The cinematography by the couple moves back and forth between home movie and David Attenborough-like focus on mother nature, especially in the Amazon rainforest.
They meet indigenous people, such as the Mapuche in Chile. One remembers his time in jail under the Pinochet regime. “I have never been hit that much.”
This film is part of a growing movement for the rights of nature, animal and non-animal. In 2017, in a world first, New Zealand granted legal personhood to the Whanganui River.
Whether Hannon and Hillier make it to Patagonia depends on them, and on the equine person who hates surfboards.
The Road to Patagonia (M)
90 minutes
In cinemas
★★★
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