A documentary that makes me love America

"Bright Leaves" by documentarian Ross McElwee is out on DVD this week. If you missed the movie when it played at The Bell (still the Ufilm Society in my mind), you should check it out. McElwee's highly personal filmmaking style may irritate some, but I find it engrossing. I guess I just like the guy.

In this movie, he takes a journey around his homestate of North Carolina and traces its connections to the tobacco industry. Mainly, you meet interesting friends of McElwee's (including the tart-tongued Charleen, who played a large part in "Sherman's March," an earlier McElwee film) and get a feel for life in contemporary North Carolina.

A lot of people I know complain that America is all the same now. We all have Starbuck's, The Gap (should I be putting trademark symbols after the names?) and Best Buy Company. So what? People in Memphis, NYC, Minneapolis, LA and the state of North Carolina are different from one another despite the presence of some retail chains. We live in a big, big country. Most of the time when we are reminded of the differences between us, it's in a negative way, such as the whole red state-blue state thang. A film like "Bright Leaves" reminds us that America is complicated and interesting. We are not all Starbucks-drinking clones of one another and that's a good thing.