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All the Time in the World

Take your limited time to view an enchanting doc about a family that beats the clock.

All the Time in the World

Grade: A

Director: Suzanne Crocker

Screenplay: Crocker from Nettie Wild story

Rating: NR

Runtime: 1 hr. 29 min.

by John DeSando

If Terrence Malick made a documentary, All the Time in the World would have been his film: minimalistic, impressionistic, humanistic. Sue Crocker directs and photographs her family of five's nine-month stay in the Yukon Territory outside  Dawson City.

The endearing part of this poetic piece is Crocker's  respect for the children's point of view, which reflects on the time and simplicity motifs with a clarity often not the realm of regular adults and usually reserved for poets. Their observations are spot on about how in the dead of winter--50  below--you feel time slowing so that you  want to slow up with it or hibernate as we would say.

The fire in the log cabin, the berries made into pies and drinks, the cuddly cats  and dog, dad’s soon-to-be -cut pony tail, and mom's enduring smile are just part of the rich mosaic called "the simple life." Like the story itself, time goes too short for this lyrical recollection of a family's unique bonding.

I'm a city guy who has won a few good=camper awards, so the vicissitudes of roughing it are within my right to review. Although I don't wish for nine months in the Yukon, I do in my daily life pare down to the minimum, the way Crocker's family in a more austere way does. 

I  take away from this exemplary doc a desire to further reduce my material life and spend more simplified time with my family and friends. In that way I know I’ll have all the time in the world.

John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com

John DeSando holds a BA from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. in English from The University of Arizona. He served several universities as a professor, dean, and academic vice president. He has been producing and broadcasting as a film critic on It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics for more than two decades. DeSando received the Los Angeles Press Club's first-place honors for national entertainment journalism.