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Films

Bright Leaves

Thomas Wartenberg thinks about how real life keeps on breaking through as he watches Bright Leaves.

Ross McElwee’s recent documentary, Bright Leaves, tells a multi-layered, complex story in which he explores both his family’s roots as tobacco growers and manufacturers in North Carolina and how he can pass on this ambiguous legacy to his son, Adrian. Beautifully filmed and humorously narrated with McElwee’s characteristic voice-over, it is certainly a film that is worth seeing again and again, as one attempts to unpack its richly layered reflections on a variety of topics.

One strand in the film particularly interested me. McElwee reveals that his great-grandfather became wealthy as one of the first cigarette manufacturers, only to have his fortune eroded in a bitter struggle with James Biddle (‘Buck’) Duke over the theft of the Bull Durham trademark along with the formula for using bright leaf tobacco.

So McElwee’s trip to the South, that is, in one sense, a personal journey to discover his roots becomes a more general investigation into the role that the tobacco industry has played in America.

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