The Art of Adventure: Travelling Around an Unexplored World Circa 1957

By Chris Knight

Rating: A

Filmmaker Alison Reid is one of those directors who bounces from project to project on the small screen. Her CV includes episodes of Murdoch Mysteries, Beyond Black Beauty, Holly Hobbie, and more.

But her last movie, 2018’s The Woman Who Loves Giraffes, made cinemagoers look up and take notice — of her directorial talent, of the stunning creatures of the title, and of the film’s human subject, Anne Innis Dagg, a rule-breaking Canadian feminist/zoologist who was taken from us far too soon last year at the age of 91.

I would never call Reid formulaic, but she has returned to a similar template with The Art of Adventure, a look back at two trailblazers of the 1950s who have been kind enough to stick around to the present day.

They are nonagenarians Robert Bateman and Bristol Foster. The first perhaps needs no introduction: famed Canadian painter, printmaker, and environmentalist. Foster is a little less well known but has done his share of ecological activism.

In 1957, already pals, Bateman and Foster bought a custom-made Land Rover, named it Grizzly Torque after a character from the comic strip Pogo, and embarked on a round-the-world trip through Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and Australia.

They knew little. Luckily, they didn’t die. Almost as luckily, they brought a 16 mm film camera, documenting the drive and mailing the footage back home. It forms the backbone of Reid’s wild ride of a movie, which also includes interviews with friends and family, as well as fans of their vehicular, artistic, and ecological exploits.

The story of the “Rover Boys,” as they were known at the time, would be thrilling enough. Their travels included a visit to a pre-touristy Taj Mahal, and a friendly meeting with a group, at the time known to Westerners as pygmies (Forest People, please).

But we also get a brief tour of their later lives, including Foster’s work in conservation in British Columbia, and Bateman’s falling out with the art world over his sale of signed prints, which annoyed purists but raised millions for good causes.

One commentator notes that he was far from being “on the take,” as many groused. “He was on the give. He gave and gave and gave.”

The final chapter of The Art of Adventure is — how shall I put it? — a meeting with an old friend. It’s a conclusion both joyous and apt. The woman who (clearly) loves documentaries has done it again.

The Art of Adventure. Directed by Alison Reid. With Bristol Foster and Robert Bateman. In theatres April 10.