Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern

This review is for the full film, not the edited version shown on "The American Experience". It's available on DVD from PBS Video.

"Troublesome Creek" is one of the most personal films I have ever seen. In some ways, it's like a home movie and in others it's like a documentary showing a vanishing piece of American life. And, although the film has a film slow portions and is about very ordinary people without any glitz, it's amazing how compelling the story is and how the audience is pulled into caring about these people.

The film is about the Jordan family in Iowa. With rising costs and the bank at their heels, an older couple decide to sell out and move into town. They just need to be sure to earn enough from the sale to pay off the bank--that way their son will be able to farm the land after they retire.

"Troublesome Creek" is interesting because the film was made by their daughter, Jeanne Jordan--a woman who had previously worked on a few other projects for PBS--including "Frontline" and "Eyes on the Prize". She did a great job overall--making it very interesting and very good. My only complaint, and it's a minor one, is that her analogy about the cowboys and the old west seemed vague and ill-defined. Still, a nice little film that manages not to be boring!

Touching, gentle documentary, made by a woman about her parents and family, as they face the likely loss of the family farm to the awful economics of modern agricultural life.

Done with a light touch and sense of humor which keeps the film from ever becoming maudlin, and reveals that sometimes life's twists and turns, even the bad ones, lead us to places that are OK after all.

If there's any weakness to the film, it's that sometimes in avoiding the sentimental it misses a bit of the emotion, and the fascinating insight it provides into the economic realities of family farming (as opposed to the romantic idea so many outsiders have) gets slightly short shrift. It would be great to understand even more than the tantalizing bits here why so many family farmers can't make it.