Bright Leaves

Seen at NYFF. Ross McElwee has perfected a sui generis form of personal-confession, free-associating, voiced-over "documentary" (if that's the word) that isn't quite like anything else. (Comparisons will doubtless be made with Michael Moore, but the difference is obvious: Moore hammers his points home, while McElwee tries to pretend that he doesn't have any to make.) Five years, he tells us, in the making, the film mines his native North Carolina for musings on tabacco, its ravages, its sweet consolations, and the fact that his family lost its fortunes to the Duke clan and then made back a more modest one by treating the victims of the industry that that clan had perfected. Oh, and that he had a father and has a son he whom he loved and loves beyond all telling. And that there was a Michael Curtiz/Gary Cooper movie, "Bright Leaf", that may or may not be about his family, but that we all ought to go check out anyway, if only to see Cooper interact on screen with his then lover Patricia Neal, who turns up in the now-doughty flesh the better to frustrate McElwee in his attempts to validate his romantic notions, another theme. North Carolina is the main character here, or rather McElwee's complex relationship with it and feelings about it and about his own now-Yankeeized family. Charm and yarns, poignant reflections on time lost and time regained and how the home movies he and his family seem to have made with Friedmanesque compulsion may or may not interact with these, some pure and wonderful comedy on film itself, all come together in a rich stew.

If you expect movies to be "about" anything in particular, this film will doubtless leave you scratching your head in frustration and bafflement. If you can accept a movie that is a beautifully paced (quick/elegiac/quick) romp by a quirky mind with one of the sharpest eyes around, you'll have a great time. The festival audience (many of whom, unlike me, seemed to know what to expect) certainly did.

PS: In the Q&A, McElwee pointed out the obvious: that this film was actually made on film, not from digitized pixels. He wryly dismissed those who applauded this affirmation as flacks for Kodak, but the reason for the applause is real and obvious. What a joy it is once again to actually see detail in an image, to see faces in full and changing expression instead of in soupy facsimile. And to see real colors (and what an eye for color McElwee has) in all their changing subtlety, instead of vague planes of yellow or puce.

Inspired by Gary Cooper's character in a movie about the tobacco trade which he believes is based on his great-grandfather, 'Sherman's March' documentarian Ross McElwee tries to make a documentary about the rampant tobacco industry in North Carolina here. As anyone who has seen 'Sherman's March' would know, McElwee (much like Nick Broomfield) has a tendency to make his documentaries equally about himself researching a subject as the subject itself and the highlight of 'Bright Leaves' is McElwee's obsession with the Cooper movie - a film he has watched so many times that he has memorised every subtle hand movement. The film's single best part is an interview with Bosnian film director Vlada Petric who carts McElwee around on a wheelbarrow in order to make McElwee's film more "kinesthetic". Petric hits some nails quite sharply on the head in terms how overly complex McElwee's project is and 'Bright Leaves' therefore really becomes about McElwee's persistence more than anything else. On the downside, this leads to the film being very light on tobacco related content; whereas in 'Sherman's March', one really discovered some things about General Sherman as well as McElwee, the same cannot really be said here. Still, it is a commendable effort and arguably more intriguing than a straightforward tobacco documentary would have been.

While it is still a personal documentary from McElwee, the master of the form, "Bright Leaves" is a film that speaks far beyond the personal. As McElwee films across the south, it seems everyone-- smoker or nonsmoker-- has a relationship with tobacco. The most amazing thing about the film is the filmmaker's even handedness and understanding for the pull that cigarette smoking has on his subjects, even though the filmmaker himself has never had a tobacco habit to peak of. Given Michael Moore's work and other popular documentaries of the day, the expectation is that "Bright Leaves" would have a stern and condemning view of the tobacco industry. On the contrary, he gives humorous insight on the age-old habit. McElwee's writing, as found in his narration, is incredibly poetic as it rolls along the blue hills of North Carolina. Even weeks later, I think of that last sequence of shots, the tanker of tobacco heading off to far lands, the shots of his son, and understand why I myself, like so many, have this attraction to smoking, or what McElwee calls the urge to give pause to time, and likens to his own filmmaking and photography.

The most how genius moment features Vlada Petric, and McElwee's long standing side character, Charlene, is still a gift. The film really does stick with you for a long, long time, and deserves lots of exposure and great distribution.

A documentary full of selfpity in which the director gives us a look in his family history and their connection to the tobacco industry. It has it's funny moments but tends to drag a little. It helps if you've seen BRIGHT LEAF by Michael Curtiz, but how many people have?

Bright Leaves is Ross McElwee at his best, part discovery, part diary, filled with humor, and overflowing with humanity. The basic premise, that he is searching for a possible connection between the Michael Curtiz/Gary Cooper/Patricia Neal/Lauren Bacall film 'Bright Leaf' and his own family history is fascinating but merely a starting point for a film that discovers its layers as it goes. Set in North Carolina, the home of bright leaf tobacco, he traces the story passed down through generations of the battle for tobacco supremacy between McElwees and the Dukes. The latter become the multi millionaires of tobacco, while the MacElwees were hypothetically shut out of a possible tobacco fortune, taking on lives as doctors, filmmakers, and in the case of his 2nd cousin – a curator of rare film prints and posters. The film is a colorful portrait of family, friends, and plain folks, filled with serendipitous plot moments, permeated with the wonder of living and being human.

While his initial 'search' seeks parallels between his ancestry and the story in film Bright Leaf , McElwee widens into the larger paradox of tobacco farming as a way of life vs. the deleterious effects of smoking.

Yet the heart of the film is in the smaller details and his supporting characters. McElwee has a remarkable genius for weaving what seems to be a discursive collection of real people into a film tapestry that meditates on work, love, hope, charity, the passage of time, growing up, family, mortality and more. His deadpan narration is at once humorous and ruminative. The writing leaps about pulling the ends together, considering ideas, speculating. His choices for subjects move from cousins, friends, past acquaintances to home movies and remarkably poignant moments with his son (who closes the film in a wonderful final sequence). There is a hilarious scene with film historian (former Harvard colleague) Vlada Petric who does an outrageous monologue riffing on both the McElwee and Curtiz films. Bright Leaves then becomes about film-making and memory itself.

Like the great documentary classics of Cinema Verite we discover so much in the small moments and passing images that the film stays with you long after you leave the theater. It should be seen on the big screen, as it is all shot on film and not video and the images resonate like film. Get to it before you can only see it on video. The bigheartedness of his vision deserves to be seen large.