The wars that have desolated the former Yugoslavia over the past four years have been, to most Americans, baffling.
In "Hell or High Water," the economic devastation of small towns is pinned on banks, which have floated loans and repossessed properties, shuttering businesses, leaving neighborhoods desolate, and pushing residents to desperation.
In Vallemosso the desolation is boundless: kilometers of desolate factories and a huge quantity of covered, almost always high-quality empty spaces which have lost their use value.
On a subsequent visit, I found the place, which had been popular before the war, desolate and nearly abandoned.
Then there is Cottrell Brewing Company in Pawcatuck (860-599-8213), which has been brewing beer in a desolate former printing press factory since 1997.
In contrast to the art, though, was Marfa itself, which had once been a cattle boomtown, so desolate that tumbleweeds rolled down the main street.
In another house seen 20 years earlier by Leslie Thomas, "was a rank of family photographs, shades in Victorian dress staring out forever into a room now desolate and holed, but which had once held the life of a warm family".
He thought his room was "quite horrid, and it opens into a long suite of desolate rooms by a door which has no fastening".
The temptation to unfurl sale banners in desolate showrooms might be the greatest for General Motors, which has been in a tight race with Toyota in 2007 to retain its position as the world's largest automaker.
"Weegee captured night in New York back when it was lonely and desolate and scary," said Tim McLoughlin, editor of the "Brooklyn Noir" anthology series, the third volume of which has just been published by Akashic Books.
But the marketplace to which they have brought the new film is a more desolate and desperate one.
