'The Bend In The River' Review

Robb Moss follows his earlier films 'Riverdogs' and 'The Same River Twice' with a documentary feature revisiting his friends in their golden years.

In 1982, Robb Moss released Riverdogs, a short documentary about his friends whom he lived and worked with as part of a naturalist community of Grand Canyon adventurers and guides. Twenty years later, he revisited the subjects of Riverdogs for the feature-length film The Same River Twice. Now he’s back with them for The Bend in the River, as he and his characters enter their golden years. I had not seen the first two films, but that wasn’t a problem. Similar to being able to jump into the Up series with any installment, you can enter this trilogy with its third film and get up to speed quickly. Moss includes clips from the previous two documentaries when necessary and relevant for such flashbacks, so there’s no reference point missed.

Unlike the Up documentaries, this series has put a greater distance between installments, and revisiting characters every 20 years instead of seven really breaks life into stages of getting older. This isn’t limited to just nonfiction. Plenty of dramas have made the point of portraying middle-aged reunions of people reflecting on their lives in their twenties. Getting them together in their late sixties and early seventies, the years associated with retirement age, offers another poignant point for deep reflection. “Our legacy has to be more than salad bars and Clinton,” one of the friends remarks, as the film touches on the impact made by that generation, not their nostalgia. Climate change is addressed, as Moss considers the life of the planet and the environment that was so important to these friends half a century ago, parallel to the aging of the people themselves.

But the part of The Bend in the River I found most fascinating deals with the impact of the series itself. Some of the characters reflect on having been recognized in public for their appearances in the previous films, and for one of them, a political career is threatened by statements and actions made on screen. Interestingly enough, Moss shows how the past documentary footage can also be used favorably as well as negatively depending on the extent and context of that material. This documentary is going to resonate more with viewers in the same age bracket as its subjects, but it’s surprisingly profound on themes that affect any of us and, more briefly, on niche ideas concerning the pros and cons of being a documentary subject, which nonfiction nerds like myself can appreciate. Fans of nudism films will also enjoy the old Riverdogs clips.