I saw this in a film festival, mainly because I was aware of the story, as I work with endangered animals. I was pleasantly surprised at the cinematography. Though it's a bit long, it's hard to tell the story without it being somewhat lengthly.
For any true animal conservationist, this movie is a wake up call about hoarder. The man featured in this movie has a mental disease, and I think the movie completely romanticized someone who was keeping these endangered animals in deplorable conditions. Deplorable - no sun, in canisters, being poked left and right with syringes - and he collected more and more while he should have taken care of the ones he had. While I feel that *at times* the movie did convey the grave negligence of husbandry responsibility, I think the film makers tried to create a tender connection with the subject and the audience, and in the meantime the ones suffering were the animals. The ego of the subject seemed more important than anything.
In one point of the movie, he is picking up animals at the airport from confiscated shipments. I wholly believe that he purchased these animals and they are not confiscated from other animal trafickers. There are too many DEP laws and regulations that would allow that, and you have to be a special facility that can accept confiscated animals. His dirty and cramped facility would never have been approved for that. There are too many inconsistencies in the movie that smell fishy.
While IMDb reviews this movie as "A story about time, death, art, love, and turtles." I found that the only veracity in that statement was in the fact that time, death, and turtles were involved. There was nothing loving about this man, if he was truly a conservationist.
The story is arduous, and painful. Not to mention repetitious. But the camera work is captivating and the animals were shot beautifully. My hats off to the DOP. But an important part of any non-fiction documentary is that the truth be told, and it was obvious that the true conditions of this journey was anything but truthful.
A movie definitely worth watching and a clear message; what not to do, how we should discourage hoarders and promote laws to control them , and we can realize how fragile our endangered animals are, as well as the human mind.
