"If a Tree Falls" a provocative environmentalist documentary

I rambled over to the Bijou arthouse cinema, located in a former church in downtown Eugene (Oregon), this afternoon to catch a fine documentary called "If a Tree Falls:  A Story of the Earth Liberation Front [ELF]."  It's a nuanced tale of some radical environmentalists who were prosecuted as terrorists in 2005 for several acts of arson.  


The film, directed by Marshall Curry, focuses on co-conspirator Daniel McGowan, a gentle New Yorker and former ad-agency drone who became a leader of ELF in the Pacific Northwest of the 1990s.  He's currently serving a 7-year federal sentence in a super-security prison built primarily for Al-Qaeda killers in Marion, Illinois.  

In this sober work about the limits of loyalty and the high price some activists pay for going beyond protest in the name of wilderness and old-growth forests, Curry takes on one of the signal developments of the US environmental movement.  FBI agents allegedly attended its premier this winter at Sundance (where it won the award for documentary editing), according to Eugene activist/filmmaker Tim Lewis, who's featured prominently in the film.  

The conspirators were caught when a US Attorney persuaded one of the suspected arsonists, a heroin addict whose own father had spent years in prison, to turn informant in exchange for his freedom.  Although one of the ELF arson actions was directed at vehicles on a tree farm that the "eco-terrorists" mistakenly believed was involved in growing genetically altered trees, their crimes injured no one.  

Deftly mixing interviews of players from all sides with dramatic footage of related anarchist/environmentalist protests in the Northwest, including several in Eugene - protests that only got dangerous when police turned violent.  In a particularly surreal scene, Eugene bike cops use their bicycles as weapons against demonstrators.  The US Forest Service comes off as an egregious accomplice to the "earth-raping" timber companies who clear-cut swaths of federal forests for private profit.  

McGowan reflects with some regret on his path to extremism, but - unlike most of the co-conspirators - he declined to testify against fellow ELF members.  It's hard not to sympathize with this obviously loving and well-loved man who wonders aloud whether there's any hope left for sustainable human life on planet Earth.

I recommend this film without reservation.  It may not have the absurdist laughs that Michael Moore weaves throughout his challenging documentaries, but it does provide an even better service:  it lets the insiders tell their own stories without superfluous comment.  

The impotence of such mainstream wilderness advocates as the Sierra Club - and even semi-saboteurs such as Earth First! - in the face of corporate greed and government complicity should give us all pause.  After all, the old riddle about a tree falling in the woods will become moot if our species is no longer around to hear it.