Butler's Cinema Scene

Matt Green

“THE WORLD BEFORE YOUR FEET” My rating: B

95 minutes | No MPAA rating

Matt Green may be a bit nuts, but it’s a wonderful nuttiness.

Now in  his early 30s, Green has spent the last seven years on a quest to walk every street, bike path, pier and park in New York City. He figures that all ads up to 8,000-plus miles.

He’s still not done, but his project has now been documented by Jeremy Workman in “The World Before Your Feet.” This love poem to the Big Apple is enough to make you want to drop everything and start hiking.

Workman’s doc is kind of awe-inspiring. We see Green striding purposefully through swirling seas of humanity; we also see him as a solitary figure in an empty landscape (yes, NYC has such places).

He cruises past landmarks like the Guggenheim Museum, but also wanders down alleyways, across seaside boardwalks and on footpaths through quiet parklands and even a ghost town in Queens. He walks in sweltering summer humidity and in blizzard conditions.

Along the way he takes pictures, which he posts on his web blog. And he meets lots of everyday people, including some who initially are suspicious of him (given his ability to defuse tense situations, Green might consider a post-walking gig as a mediator or reconciliation facilitator).

He is particularly fond of cemeteries (we see the graves of Alexander Hamilton and Harry Houdini) and of the exotic plants (fig trees!!!) that have somehow taken root surrounded by concrete. He finds the oldest and tallest living thing in the city, a tree called The Queen’s Giant.

He has stumbled across hundreds of homemade 9-11 memorials erected in front yards or painted on the sides of buildings.

Along the way we get Green’s back story.  He was a civil engineer when he decided he hated his job and was going to walk instead. He can live off his savings because he survives on so little.  He crashes with friends and acquaintances, never spending more than a few nights in any one place. He housesits cats and dogs. He almost never eats out, surviving on beans and rice.

Far from feeling deprived, Green says he derives great satisfaction from the basics of life.

He’s not entirely monkish.  We meet two young women with whom he has had serious relationships (he was engaged to one of them), but both say their yearning for the quiet joys of domesticity could not compete with Green’s wanderlust.  Both wonder about the wisdom of Green’s isolated life; still, they wish him well.

We spend some time with a fellow walker, a Jamaican transplant named Garnette Cadogan who shares experiences with Green.  While the white Green has never been mugged or assaulted, the black Cadogan has found he’d best wear a buttoned-down dress shirt and present a totally innocuous profile if he wants to avoid ugly confrontations.

As fascinating as “The World Before Your Feet” is, it may be too much of a good thing. A certain redundancy kicks in long before this 95-minute films reaches its end.  A one-hour version, one suspects, would truly sing.

Green claims to have no master plan, no scheme to capitalize on his experiences once the big walk ends (if it ever does).

What’s the point of it all? Well, as he  says, “I’m fully engaged in something I really care about.”

We should all be so satisfied.

| Robert W. Butler