"Bright Leaves"
Documentary filmmaker of the personal kind, Ross McElwee, rambled through history and a bevy of southern belles in his 1986 missive, "Sherman's March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love In the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation." The filmmaker heads down south once again to investigate the possible sabotage of his great grandfather's tobacco business by the man who became the American Tobacco Company in "Bright Leaves."
McElwee has learned a great deal about personal documentary filmmaking since his long winded "Sherman's March," continuing his private perspective as he strives to learn the truth about his family's history. Things get rolling, so to speak, when the documaker comes across a 1950 Hollywood mellower called "Bright Leaf," starring Gary Cooper, Lauren Bacall and Patricia Neal, about rival tobacco growers in post-Civil War North Carolina.
McElwee, on the belief that the film is about his great-grandfather, John Harvey McElwee, ruined by his business rival, James Buchanan Duke (of Duke University fame), journeys south of the Mason Dixon once again. While in the heart of tobacco lands he discovers that the Dukes may well have ruined the McElwee family's tobacco fortunes by stealing their "Durham Bull" tobacco formula and repackaging it under the Duke banner, the famous "Bull Durham" tobacco.
This travesty to the family is tempered as the documentarian tells of the generation of McElwee doctors spawned because of the loss of the family business, showing that the rivalry, in the long run, was beneficial to the McElwee clan and to society. Ross McElwee, freed of the Duke demon, turns his camera to the horrors caused by smoking, and the impact of the changing times on the local towns in the heart of the tobacco belt. "Bright Leaves" mixes social conscience with personal journey in an even balance.
I give it a B-.
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