Almost There

Almost There, made under the banner of Windy City-based doc shop Kartemquin Films (Hoop Dreams), gives Anton’s kitschy-colorful portraiture the requisite close-up, but the film quickly becomes more compelling as a protracted intervention than as an act of advocacy.

After guiding his fate, the filmmakers step back and dispassionately capture a series of frustrated caregivers passing the baton, each nudging Anton toward a new life. This decision makes Almost There a richer, more compassionate portrait.

The documentary homes in on the ideas of community, about caregiving and giving care, about human nature and humanity, about parenting and becoming parents to the people we once called mom and dad.

What starts out as a familiar kind of portrait...eventually grows a layer or two more complex.

This first feature from Dan Rybicky and Aaron Wickenden demonstrates that these documentary filmmakers might do well to think more like journalists sometimes.

In surveying this setting, one might think Almost There is a documentary about impoverished, elderly folks who have sadly fallen through the cracks in the system. Instead, it’s an uncomfortable journey through the later life of an artist, a warts-and-all look at the filmmakers’ process that fails to get past its most troublesome wart.

The film is as lacking in polish and structure as its subject's canvases, which makes it an appropriate tribute to a marginal figure whose dreams of art world and/or Hollywood stardom stubbornly remain "almost there."