Bright Leaves
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McElwee shooting a scene from Bright Leaves
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| Directed by | Ross McElwee |
| Produced by | Ross McElwee |
| Written by | Ross McElwee |
| Cinematography | Ross McElwee |
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107 minutes |
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| Language | English |
Bright Leaves is a 2003 United States/United Kingdom documentary film by independent filmmaker Ross McElwee about the association his family had with the tobacco industry.Bright Leaves had its world premiere at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.
Bright Leaf is the name of a strain of tobacco. It was also the name of a 1949 novel and 1950 feature film about a struggle between two tobacco barons. (Patricia Neal, one of the film's stars, is interviewed.)
The struggle depicted in the film, according to McElwee family tradition, parallels the historical one between McElwee's great-grandfather and the patriarch of the Duke family who founded Duke University.
Interviewed as part of this film include Allan Gurganus, Ross McElwee, Tom McElwee, Patricia Neal, Vlada Petric, Paula Larke, Marilyn Levine, Emily Madison, Adrian McElwee, and Charleen Swansea.
The documentary follows McElwee's usual style, where he gives voiceovers to apparently spontaneous footage, making the story more personal. According to Roger Ebert:
Marian Keane, in her essay "Reflections on Bright Leaves", collected in "Three Documentary Filmmakers", asserts that Bright Leaves displays McElwee's extraordinary ability to present "people in their uniqueness", contrasting this with other documentaries where people often "seem to exist in the world of film as if suspended from their relation to their actual lives."
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