Off The Map

“William Gibbs’ first painting was twenty inches high and thirty-one feet wide,

one foot shy of the perimeter of my room.

The dimensions suited the subject, the ocean’s horizon.

He hung it so that when I lay on my bed,

I could stare out fourteen miles to the horizon any way I looked.

Encircled by water, I would turn and float on my back,

arms outstretched, chin up,

and feel in the small of my back the rounded curve of the planet,

supporting me like a buoy.

Like faith.”

Based on the graceful and thought-provoking play by Joan Ackerman, the movie version of Off the Map challenges our idea of what is ideal and will have us remembering a time when things for ourselves began to change.

Sometimes when you look back on your life, there is one moment that stands out above all others, the one moment that changed the way you saw the world. For Bo Groden it was the summer of her eleventh year. Growing up off the map in the New Mexico desert with her eccentric parents where every day was less than ordinary. She longed for companions beyond her newly depressed father, her mother holding the whole weight of their lives on her shoulders though steady and strong, and her father’s silent but faithful friend, George. She passes the days romping through the local dump, searches for amusement in her endless backyard, and writes various letters to companies for free food samples.

Everything changes the day a stranded IRS Agent, William Gibbs, arrives to see Bo’s mother standing naked and still in the garden, so still in fact that he doesn’t even notice the bee that intends to strike. William is hit by a heavy and fevered sleep for days and finally opens his eyes surrounded by the majestic beauty of New Mexico.  Under its spell he awakens the strength in everyone around him and leaves the Groden family forever changed.

Featured in the movie is the work from Santa Fe artist Stan Berning and an excerpt from Richard Henry Dana’s book Two Years Before the Mast.

~posted by Kara P.