Amargosa
Directed by Todd Robinson

The San Francisco Chronicle
by Peter Stack
December 8, 2000

"Amargosa," Todd Robinson's new documentary, leaves no doubt that 76-year- old dancer and artist Marta Becket is a remarkable person. When she was 43, she abandoned a rich New York art scene to forge an entirely new creative life in a forbidding Death Valley ghost town.

Thin, graceful, wizened and disarmingly down to earth, Marta Becket is an inspiration. "Amargosa" treats her as such, catching her at work in the ornate Amargosa Opera House she pretty much restored single-handedly.

Robinson's portrait is an affectionate look at a woman who faced her own destiny one day and refused to blink. She's out there, in the spiritual sense. But the film shows her as warmly human, not a desert kook.

Becket was a successful Broadway dancer traveling cross country with her husband when their car broke down. They were near Death Valley Junction, on the site of an abandoned adobe hotel complex. The place, Amargosa, was once operated by Pacific Coast Borax Co. and had a small, crumbling theater.

Becket decided on the spot that it was to be the home for her boundless creative energies.

The forthright artist went on with what essentially was her own private show. She choreographed and performed her own dances, at first to an audience of tumbleweeds. But over the course of six years, she painstakingly developed another audience -- the Renaissance-looking crowd she painted in elaborate murals to fill her Amargosa Opera House with gawking spectators.

Eventually Becket was discovered by living audiences, mostly appreciators of art, who have gone to great lengths to see her work. Among the trickle of admirers was writer Ray Bradbury, who's a fan.

The film is an engaging testament to the pursuit of dreams. Becket overcame much and worked hard to get where she is today, a relatively unknown artist in the middle of nowhere. But she loves her unique place in the world.

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