“IF A TREE FALLS” My rating: B+ (Opens Aug. 19 at the Screenland Crossroads)
85 minutes | No MPAA rating
Watching “If a Tree Falls,” Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman’s excellent documentary about the lumberyard-burning, development-hating Earth Liberation Front, I was reminded of the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages”:
“Good and bad, I define these terms, quite clear, no doubt, somehow…”
This film isn’t just a terrifically informative and insightful history of a radical movement that over several years committed acts of domestic terrorism (at least that’s what the government argued) to limit what its members regarded as the systematic rape of the Earth.
It’s also a meditation on youth, idealism, the political process and the very essence of human nature, especially our impulses for self preservation.
Above all else, this film asks unanswerable questions about right and wrong, good and bad, and leaves its audience both incensed and sad.
Butler's Cinema Scene 