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But Bright Leaf is merely a starting point. McElwee wrestles with his "guilt over the global tobacco addition" in which his ancestors played a role. He notes the irony that later descendants all became doctors, and treated those ravaged by smoking. McElwee interviews relatives about his great grandfather, as well as modern-day tobacco farmers, current smokers (one engaged couple cannot make good on their pledges to quit), and cancer patients (fans of McElwee's films will be delighted to be reunited with Charleen, McElwee's former teacher). McElwee is the anti-Michael Moore. He is a kinder, gentler interviewer, and not at all confrontational. He has no agenda. As for Bright Leaf, he does manage to interview actress Patricia Neal, who was in the film, and the widow of the film's screenwriter, who gives McElwee a definitive answer. Along the way, there are several "stranger than fiction incidents," such as a visit to a former McElwee tobacco warehouse that now serves as a beauty school, and an interview with film theorist Vlada Petric, who, instead of being filmed seated in a movie theatre, insists that McElwee shoot him while Petric pushes him around in a wheelchair rigged to facilitate a tracking shot. --Donald Liebenson
| CATEGORY: | DVD |
| THEATRICAL RELEASE DATE: | 2003 |
| MANUFACTURER: | First Run Features |
| MPAA RATING: | NR (Not Rated) |
| FEATURES: | Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC |
| TYPE: | Documentary, Drama, Movie |
| MEDIA: | DVD |
| # OF MEDIA: | 1 |
| UPC: | 720229911610 |
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Customer Reviews of Bright Leaves
How can someone so passive be so melodramatic? This movie's trailer was very interesting, making the movie seem like an attack on the tobacco economy of North Carolina, complete with revealingly embarrassing interviews of the unconflicted, overly proud yokels who are a part of it (or who wish they'd inherited a part of it). And there is in fact three minutes of information and entertainment in this movie. But by the end of this 105-minute, sleepy, repetitive exercise in narcissistic self-indulgence, the viewer is left hating the filmmaker for repeatedly overdramatizing his "bad luck", researching his subject ploddingly, and keeping in a good 45 minutes of footage that belongs on the editing floor. Even after an hour and a half, the filmmaker is shown doing preliminary research at a local museum. <
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>The movie breaks down into two subjects which become monotonous within an hour: smokers who are too listless either to muster the will to quit or to say anything revealing on camera, and the filmmaker's self-pitying longing for association with greatness either through the obscure movie 'Bright Leaf' or by proxy through the Duke tobacco family that outcompeted his great grandfather McElwee. <
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>'Bright Leaf' (1950) starred Gary Cooper as a failed tobacco aristocrat across Patricia Neal. The filmmaker aspires to associate a failed tobacco aristocrat ancestor of his with Cooper's romantic character, to establish that both his ancestor and the movie had great merit and are unfairly ignored today. Later in his documentary, after some basic research, he finds neither is true. The quixotic project is itself a symbol of the filmmaker's passivity, his desire to inherit, and to have a project or film or legacy dropped in his lap with little effort. His approach to filmmaking, making a documentary as little more than a home video, coincides with his view that so much can be revealed by home videos that the one holding the camera need do little. But like many home videos about family history, it is bound to hold little interest beyond his extended family. <
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>I think his belief in the ability of home video to uncover truths has a lot to do with the failure of this documentary. Sitting passively behind a home video camera, he seems to think he can be quite passive and produce a film because of what he calls the revealing nature of home video. At one point he even admits his lack of judiciousness, saying filmmaking gives him the high of smoking, and leads him to be enamored with filming most anything, as he films a garbage can in a hotel parking lot. <
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>The theme of disproportionate pride in some of the film subjects would made an interesting study if the film hadn't been so much the result of disproportionate pride itself. Beyond pride, envy, self-pity, passivity and narcissism, the filmmaker even puts his paranoia on display at one point, interpreting most everything in the local Duke tobacco museum as a monument to the triumph of the Duke tobacco aristocracy over the McElwee tobacco aristocracy. <
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>His interviewing experts on 'Bright Leaf' to redeem it and his ancestor just backfire. A Russian film theorist puts the filmmaker on the spot for bothering him for his opinion of such a mundane movie. The daughter of 'Bright Leaf's' author debunks the tie the filmmaker thinks he has to the book. Patricia Neal debunks his reading of a gesture she made onscreen over 50 years ago. Her comments further highlight his reading too much merit and meaning into both 'Bright Leaf' and 'Bright Leaves'. Despite the three experts' revealing the filmmaker's own superficiality, somehow he still felt ok about releasing this movie. I suspect his leaving in moments of his project's being taken down a notch had more to do with his lacking material or not appreciating the implications of the comments than with his wanting to present an honest record in the selfless interest of his audience. <
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>The synopsis of 'Sherman's March' indicates his narcissism's sending him off topic is not confined to this documentary alone.
Another Great Film From McElwee
Ross McElwee is one of the finest filmmakers working today. To call him a documentarian may give the wrong impression. His films are more personal essays on his life, and the people around him.
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>BRIGHT LEAVES is yet another essay of his. This one follows McElwee as he traces his family in North Carolina tobacco country. Upon seeing an old Gary Cooper film by the name of BRIGHT LEAF, which follows a tobacco farmer battling a larger one, he begins to wonder if the film was based on his great grandfather, who had a similar battle with the Duke tobacco family. This leads him to interview family, tobacco farmers, Patricia Neal (co-star of BRIGHT LEAF), and the wife of the author of the book the film was based on.
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>The only thing keeping my review from five stars is it isn't up to his earlier film TIME INDEFINITE, which I would name as probably one of the fifty greatest films ever made. If any other filmmaker had made this it would be in the five star range, but just in comparison to his other films, it isn't his best.
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>As for the DVD, while the transfer is very nice, there are very few extras. Just a few text screens, none of which add all that much to the film or justify the rather expensive price of the DVD.
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>But this is a must see for McElwee fans.