Bright Leaves - **1/2
Now Playing: (2003, Ross McElwee) [seen in theatre]
I've only seen one other McElwee film, his acclaimed debut feature SHERMAN'S MARCH, and while his latest isn't quite as good, it certainly has the same feel to it. Like SHERMAN'S MARCH, this film begin with the germ of an idea, and then McElwee doesn't so much probe the idea in depth as examine the often-conflicting thoughts and feelings he has about it. In this case, his jumping-off point is his family's legacy in the tobacco industry, beginning with his uncle's financial ruin at the hands of North Carolina mogul James B. Duke in the decades following the Civil War. In the course of the film, McElwee examines what tobacco means to people, not only his family but also those who smoke, those who work with tobacco, and those who live in North Carolina. He also discovers a 1950s melodrama entitled BRIGHT LEAF, starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal (who is interviewed during this film) and wonders what its relationship might be to his grandfather's plight. Mostly, McElwee turns the camera on himself as he ponders about his own life, his thoughts guided only to a certain point by the concept of smoking (he likens the compulsive chronicling of his life on film to a smoker's cravings). If BRIGHT LEAVES isn't as effective or original as SHERMAN'S MARCH, perhaps that's because the first-person documentary has become much more common in the years since McElwee arrived on the scene, and because the scope of this film feels much more limited than his debut, in which he puzzled over the differences between the South of his birth and his transplanted home in New England through the strangeness of Southern women, who seemed almost alien to him. Still, his latest film is certainly worthwhile, with a number of priceless moments and an amiable low-key feel.