Nearly a decade after making his feature debut as a co-director of Albert Maysles’s final documentary, In Transit, David Usui finally went solo for this hidden gem of a film. Been Here Stay Here is a mostly observational portrait of a conservative, religious island community enduring under threat of climate change that they believe is God and nature’s will. Usui follows crabbers and oystermen, tour guides and churchgoers, elders and children in their lives on Tangier Island, located smack dab in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. It’s a place that has lost two-thirds of its land to rising sea levels over the last 200 years.
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That time span doesn’t make it seem like the problem is completely the fault of humans, but this isn’t a film dealing with details on the science or cause of the situation. It’s driven by the people, who are driven by their faith. Usui uses a few tricks to deliver more than mere people watching and landscape cinematography. He captures another documentary crew interviewing locals, snagging some of those discussions for his own film. He also introduces a young pastor focused on climate change through a Christian perspective in order to present that conversation between differing factions and generations. For another layer, the film includes a sprinkling of archival footage of life on the island from half a century ago.
Been Here Stay Here is a beautiful and serene documentary that may lull us toward a shared acceptance of our fates. The score by James William Blades is epically soothing. Every shot composed by Usui and Peter Steusloff is stunning and full of grace. I couldn’t help but be reminded of montages in disaster movies of people in their daily routines just before the cataclysmic events wipe them out, even if the looming calamity here isn’t as immediately life-threatening or destructive. It’s more of a pleasantly provocative stopover in a virtual journey of land and time.