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Category:    Home > Reviews > Documentary > Mockumentary > Bright Leaves

Bright Leaves

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C     Film: C+

 

 

Mockumentaries and Documentaries are more popular than ever.  When Ross McElwee did Sherman’s March (1985, reviewed elsewhere on this site), it eventually received raves, but I was not impressed.  Now he is back with a family search story about his supposed roots with Bright Leaves (2003), which connects his family legacy to the tobacco and all the death it “leaves” in its way.

 

Though better made and shot than its popular predecessor, Bright Leaves becomes a one-joke project and whether it was true or not became quickly irrelevant.  The contradiction of the beautiful South and the deadly product it produced is obvious and clichéd.  It makes the idea of tobacco deaths, from harvesting by tortured and terrorized slave labor to the victims of its use, too much of a joke for its own good.  Yet again, a left-of-center work in the (semi-)documentary world decides to laugh its way through something serious, trivializing it instead of confronting it.  Many critics seemed to be amused, which just shows how bad film criticism has become in the United States.

 

The letterboxed 1.85 X 1 image is soft and often tired, mixing current video footage with older and even better looking film footage and stills.  Nothing memorable here except the repetition of close shots of interviewees that wears out its welcome quickly.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has no surround information and is very standard.  Extras include director’s text statement, film notes by Godfrey Cheshire, notes on Michael Curtiz’s original drama Bright Leaf, text biographies, five trailers for other First Run DVDs, and additional music by Paula Larke.  These extras do not save the main feature from itself.  Skip this one unless you will laugh at anything.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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