Benjamin Smoke

As ethereal, moving, and uncompromising as its subject.

It's the hypnotic long-form music video Smoke never got to make.

The film has a richer, more various visual texture than most documentaries, combining still photographs, black-and-white video and Super-8 film, sometimes with wild sound or none at all.

It feels as though we're on a journey with Benjamin, who proves to be a wryly funny, passionate and complex traveling companion.

Poignant portrait.

As a portrait of a man barely qualifying for a cinematic portrait, Benjamin Smoke is a trifle, but when Sillen and Cohen turn their cameras on the weedy, workaday, hellhole America that Benjamin calls home, the movie comes alive.

Rather morbid.