A Walk Into the Sea

A Walk Into the Sea, Esther Robinson

10.07.2007
Esther Robinson seemed to have a problem most filmmakers have, “How to structure the film?” In her film A Walk Into the Sea I found the story interesting, but she wavered many times with what she wanted the film to say. It jumped from a few common themes: the disappearance of her uncle, her uncle’s involvement in Andy Warhol’s Factory, Andy Warhol’s cronies at the Factory and all the relationships with Andy and Warhol putting his name on other people’s work. It would switch from storyline to storyline too frequently.
The story of her uncle, Dan Williams, is really fascinating. He was an artist in the sixties who had an affair with Warhol and made films at the Factory. Robinson uses interviews with all the key players in that scene to figure out who her uncle was and what happened to him. I found the interviews intriguing, but what I liked most about the movie was Williams’ own films that were shown. The interviews were shot in video with a gross film grain filter and sometimes you would hear her interviewing the people. Though she started the film explaining the story with voiceover, she never appears on camera, and the occasional voice from behind the camera was annoying. It felt too much like a school project with a good soundtrack. But at the same time it makes it this intimate story of her trying to fill this void in her past, and it seems kind of juvenile the way she is trying to answer these questions by rely on personal accounts of others.
I wish more information about Dan Williams existed. It was more of an overview of his life and his demise instead of who he was, which bummed me out a little. But I think it was a good idea to see what all these different sources had to say, but the execution could’ve been cleaned up. Though Robinson was able to invoke the need for me to want see the films of her uncle. She was able to give exposure to the forgotten films of her uncle, which is inevitably a tribute to him as an artist.

(Filmmaker Magazine did an interview with Esther Robinson: here.
While reading the interview I saw that she said, "There's this moment in Stranger Than Paradise where it goes to black in between scenes, and I remember sitting in this black theater thinking, “Holy fuck! You can do that?! You can just go to black?!” It literally changed my life. I went to NYU because of sitting in the black in Stranger Than Paradise."
As a filmmaker myself I have had that exact same revelation, and it was endearing to read.)