Sara Vilkomerson’s Guide To This Week’s Movies: Pass the Swiffer!

So, let’s pretend you are a filmmaker and you want to make a documentary about a natural phenomenon. There are an awful lot of amazing things out in the world to spend a couple of years investigating, right? What’s the deal with those giant squids? Or, why do we have the Northern Lights, or seaweed that can glow in the dark, or those weird, small, tail-less kitties that live in the snow? Is it possible that the octopus came from outer space? That robots are right now planning to overthrow our government? Do elephants really have the best memory? And so on. So when we heard that there was a new documentary about dust—yes, dust!—we were intrigued in spite of ourselves; what could we learn about this fairly dry (yuk, yuk) subject? (After all, most of our experience with dust comes when it’s time to wipe off the television screen.)

In Dust, a film by Hartmut Bitomsky, the essential question is: What is dust? “Dust has no home of its own, so it spreads everywhere and leaves the trace of a fundamental denial,” Mr. Bitomsky tells us. Um, O.K.! The director takes us on a 90-minute journey to find the answer to his question, and in the process we learn that dust can come in many different shapes, colors, sizes and chemicals—dust gives the sunset its pretty hues and is also responsible for our blue skies. At home, when you are wiping off that aforementioned TV screen, you should know that 95 percent of household dust is really just tiny pieces of skin and hair and stuff from our pets. Ewww. Mr. Bitomsky visits with a variety of different professionals, meteorologists, astronomers, artists, business owners, and people who actually specialize in investigating dust, both its effect on the environment and on our personal health. They look at the Sahara sandstorms, the dust bowl of Oklahoma in the 1930s and even the 9/11 “human dust” found in firefighter’s lungs. But for us, the most disturbing information came from the scientific dust collectors who have found dust they can’t identify but believe came from (brace yourselves) unknown space galaxies. Dust creates the universe! Run for your lives!

Throughout the film, one might be forgiven for wondering when the jokes might come in. After all, mysterious unidentified space dust or not, we’re still talking about flying specks that for the most part we can’t see. Surely, we can all take a moment to consider the innate hilarity in a movie about dust? But the (very German) Mr. Bitomsky never once breaks from his bromidic delivery, to the point where we actually looked around our living room to see if we were being punk’d by our superiors. We can’t honestly say we have a new appreciation of dust after getting through this one, but it’s good to know that somebody out there is keeping a (microscopic) eye on the situation. Oh, and if you want to skip the film because you think you know how to deal with your own personal dust situation, here’s a hint: you don’t. Dust always wins.

Dust opens today at the Film Forum.

svilkomerson@observer.com