Rainbow Canyons: A dusty, brief, and very 1935 trip

Is this worth your time?

Honestly, only if you have ten minutes to kill and a weird craving for mid-thirties travel documentaries. If you like stuff like The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, you’ll probably find this comforting. If you hate voiceovers that sound like they're being read from a teleprompter inside a cathedral, skip it.

The whole thing feels like a dusty souvenir. It’s 1935, and FitzPatrick is very concerned with telling us exactly what we’re looking at. He really wants us to know about the "Pioneer and Indian" history. It’s all very polite and slightly stiff.

The rocks are the stars, obviously. They have that weird, glowing quality that old film stock gets when it’s pointed at bright desert sun. It made me think of the visual textures in Lisboa, but way drier and full of sagebrush.

The rhythm of it

FitzPatrick doesn't leave the camera on any one shot for very long. It’s a rapid-fire tour. It feels less like a movie and more like a guy showing you his vacation slides while you’re trapped on his couch.

There is this one moment where the camera just pans across a ridge. It’s silent for a second, and you can almost feel the heat radiating off the screen. Then the narration kicks back in, and it’s like, oh right, we have to keep moving.

It’s not as chaotic as Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle, but it shares that same sense of being a strange, specific relic. It’s just a guy, a canyon, and a microphone.

I found myself wondering if anyone actually lives out there. The film treats the canyon like an empty museum. It’s peaceful, I guess, but also a little lonely. Definitely not the kind of thing you'd watch if you want a plot or anything resembling a character arc. It’s just... geography. 🏜️

If you're in the mood for something completely different, maybe watch Daddies instead. At least that has people talking to each other instead of just to the audience.