Remember back in 1999 when a band
of skinny young men, sporting turtlenecks and ski masks reeked temporary havoc
across downtown Seattle, unhorsing a mayor, embarrassing a police chief and
ruining a Bill Clinton “crowning achievement” economic summit? In the
meticulously researched, thought provoking, remarkably balanced and humane new
doc If a Tree Falls Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman plant us inside a
reckless moment when a small band of environmental radicals went toe-to-toe
with folks they considered evil doers: logging companies, meat packing plants,
SUV dealerships, university agriculture labs, local cops and, fatefully, the US
Department of Justice. Beginning in the mid-nineties with relatively mild tree
hugging protests, the kids from a loose knit network calling themselves The
Earth Liberation Front (ELB) introduced bold new tactics that in the Bush era
would be labeled eco-terrorism. The violence on both sides escalated rapidly:
riot police in Eugene, Oregon are seen applying pepper spray and tear gas to
protestors’ torsos, prompting the ELB to launch a sophisticated series of fire
bombings across the country, becoming the FBI’s number domestic terrorism
target, spawning the creation of a special Federal task force that would prompt
memories of the Nixon-era battle to stamp out the Weather Underground. In the
wrong hands this material – shots of clear cut old forests, wild horses
butchered in blood spewing dog food plants, a lot of SUVs in flames with their
horns bleating like dying beasts – might merely get us riled at the usual
suspects without shedding any light on disturbing underlining issues: the
insidious power of the federal government to prompt activists to rat each other
out; the real personal and emotional toll exacted from the destruction of
private property; and the loss of innocence as many families discover just who
their idealistic kids have grown up to be.
The filmmakers turn the hunt for
ELB members – the prosecution made difficult by a lack of physical evidence at
the crime scenes – into a riveting cat and mouse game with revealing comments
from felines and rodents alike.
In the opening act we meet Daniel
McGowan, at first glance an articulate, conscience stricken future felon who is
spending long days under house arrest in his sister’s New York apartment.
“In 2001 I was involved with The
Earth Liberation Front in two separate arsons. If people look at my case they
think, ‘What if that motherfucker burned down my house?’ I think people think
it’s just a bunch of young crazies walking around with gas cans lighting things
on fire that piss them off. They think, ‘What if I burned things that pissed me
off -- that’s kind of crazy’ -- which it is kind of crazy. But people need to realize
that this thing is not that simple.”
This former Catholic schoolboy –
who became such a committed recycler that he once stripped off the labels on
all the can goods in his sister’s pantry – wins our hearts by taking us beat by
fateful beat through a trial by fire that has him facing life in prison.
In 1988 another conscience stricken
former schoolboy adapted with philosophical vigor and bratty dark humor Robert
Cormier’s novel concerning a pitch battle for souls in the dusty precincts of a
Washington State Catholic prep school. A high point in Keith Gordon’s The
Chocolate War occurs in the classroom of an idealistic priest (Harold
and Maude’s Bud Cort) when frat students create chaos every time the good
friar utters the magic catchphrase, “the environment.” In some lovely
unintentional way the creators of If a Tree Falls portray a battle for
souls in the heart of American eco-topia where that deadly phrase acquires a
comic sting that Swift himself might have appreciated.