Lottery of the Sea (2006)
Spent a significant chunk of my Saturday afternoon watching Allan Sekula’s documentary The Lottery of the Sea (2006). Here’s the blurb:
“Iconoclast photographer and documentarian Allan Sekula unfolds a series of variations shot in the Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Japan and other maritime countries around two of his major obsessions: globalization and the sea. In this rumination on the sea as a “primordial source of sublimity,” Sekula explores a matrix of narratives – Greek myths, American movies, and stories of longshoremen, lost sailors and displaced populations – and rejects on the globalizing effects of Adam Smith’s notion of the seafaring life as a form of gambling.”
At 179 minutes, it’s a bit of an endurance test, with the unashamedly grim and grubby worms-eye-view of global capitalism thudding regularly, as a hammer pummelling you into submission. This isn’t to say that it’s a bad documentary, because it isn’t. And if it was, that wouldn’t be the point. Sekula’s VO work is lyrical and seductive. There are some really striking sequences, particularly those focusing on the Panama Canal and the Prestige oil spill. The politics is a bit heavy-handed, but there’s an interesting contrast between the diffuse “affective politics” of the anti-globalisation movement and the more overtly class-based syndicalism of the dock workers.
It does hang together well, with the pieces least relevant to the narrative trajectory being interesting enough to warrant inclusion on their own merit. More importantly, it’s a powerful antidote to the digitality of most media coverage of globalisation (the BBC Box being a rare exception, but still – by its very nature – hitched to the digital) … focusing instead on the gunk of the oil spills, the metallic bulk of the shipping containers.
Overall, it’s a gruelling and unevenly paced documentary, but with enough interest to sustain a viewing. Doesn’t require much active brain work, but will leave you with questions and images – a beached squid dragging itself back to the water // a domestic servant, behind glass, moving to the drumbeats of the anti-globalisation protesters in the streets outside // bored-looking junior Panamanian government personnel, overseeing the endless rubber stamping of paperwork for flags of convenience …