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.
