52 Pick-Up # 26 – Clearcut (1991)

Whoo! Fireworks! Celebration!

Entry #26! I'm halfway there!

Wait, what?

Fourth of what?

Oh, sure. Yeah, there's that too. I suppose I can spare some fireworks there.

Speaking of, what movie got rolled for this one?

Oh.

OH.

I mean, good movie, but...oh.

Okay, let's start this again.

Welcome back to 52 Pick-Up. My year long challenge to keep writeups coming once a week and branch out with first time cinematic watches as I do so. With this entry taking things into July, I have officially hit the halfway point on this journey, and I have to say, I'm pretty happy with how it's come along so far. There's been some good, some VERY good, and even the movies I wasn't as wowed by, it was less 'this is awful' and more 'this just isn't for me.'

I feel like by commenting on that, I am calling down the thunder for something in the back half of this year, but I'll try not to dwell on that. For this week, I've got a movie I've had on deck for a bit thanks to the fine folk at Severin Films and their folk horror movie collections. It's a different sort of take on the genre and one that has just enough overlap to feel darkly apropos for the same week as the Fourth of July, even if this one is from Canada.

So, without further ado, it's off to the Canadian wilderness for Clearcut.

As a general pitch, Clearcut concerns one Peter Maguire (Ron Lea), a white lawyer acting on behalf of indigenous activists protesting a road that would lead to clearcutting trees through native land. At the start of the movie, Peter's case has been lost, and while he insists they can appeal (even if he himself isn't confident) the tribe doesn't share his already diminished optimism. As he considers his next course of action, the tribe's leader, Wilf (Floyd Red Crow) introduces him to a member of the tribe he's never seen before – Arthur (Graham Greene.) Arthur bonds with Peter over their frustrations with Arthur offering more extreme violent alternatives that Peter dismisses. What starts as a simple conversation soon spirals as Arthur enlists Peter first in kidnapping a logging manager, followed by a multi-day journey into the woods, where Peter's ideals will be put to the test.

Yes, this is a movie made in Canada, but damn if it's hard not to see the applicability of this story on the 4th of July weekend all the same. The conflicts presented here are far from unique to a single indigenous tribe, and one would be hard pressed to say America has been any more benevolent on this subject than Canada has been. In that regard, this timed up well as a dark but still incredibly relevant movie to watch, not just for the 4th but specifically for the 250th.

A large part of this goes to the ideological conflict that is the center of this movie. Make no mistake, while this is a great thriller and a subtle folk horror, that ideological struggle is the real heart of this, particularly with dealing with the complicated nuances around matters of colonialism, environmentalism, and pacifism. Much of this conflict is best embodied in Greene's performance as Arthur, and how he evolves from simply an angry native to an active challenge of Peter's entire belief system. Before I dig into that, I do just want to say – this is a great performance for Graham Greene, a man who was a consistent welcome presence as a character actor in indigenous roles for decades before his death. In fact, of the work I have seen him in, this might be my favorite Greene performance, playing against the stoic roles he was often cast as in a figure who grows from a seemingly straightforward angry man to the voice for generations of broken promises to his and other tribes. 

The folk horror element of this movie further lends to both Greene's performance and the ideological conflict at play. It's not presented as a major supernatural element, instead, the movie presents many smaller tells that Arthur may be more than the activist he appears to be. In that regard, it changes the nature of his role contrasted to Peter, simply from being an native lashing out and instead being a force that is taking this kidnapping and subsequent journey as a way to test, and ultimately teach Peter about the futility of the lawyer's insistence on a pacifistic approach to what is clearly becoming a losing battle.

That conclusion, as another welcome side, manages to thread a needle that often trips up movies dealing in topics like these – how to balance a story where you're showing flaws in multiple sides without coming across as a toothless 'all sides are kind of wrong.' Director Ryszard Bugajski is very interested in exploring the pros and cons of all sides, but toothless this movie is not – it acknowledges that these colonial forces do bring some things to the native peoples, but also doesn't shy away from what they have taken away from them – most notably in the movie's climax, in a scene where Arthur forces Bud, the kidnapped logging manager (Michael Hogan) to confront what his efforts will ultimately destroy. It's a moment that makes a striking contrast with Peter's journey as Arthur flat-out tells him to see and Bud, by his own admission, cannot.

If you're looking for something upbeat this 4th of July (and I can sympathize with that), you might want to wait on this movie for now. I would still say it is worth seeking out if you ever get the chance though. It wasn't quite the folk horror I was expecting going in, but what it was instead is a stripped down, engaging, at times intense look at the role and legacy of colonialism and whether this is something that one can peaceably deal with or can only meet with force.

For my part, this is up there on the biggest pleasant surprises of this project for me, alongside titles like Z, Wild Zero, and Marjoe (it's telling that only one of these isn't a downer, huh?)

And with this, this journey now officially concludes its first half, but there's still more to come.

For those dismayed I went Canadian for this holiday, don't worry – I'll be back in the ol' US of A again next week, and getting back in touch with that old time gri—er...religion.

So, see you all next week for a pre-horror Brad Dourif in John Huston's Wise Blood.

Till then.