If A Tree Falls - A Story of the Earth Liberation Front: First, anyone pretending that this documentary is unbiased is smoking some great weed - it’s firmly in the camp of Daniel McGowan, convicted terrorist associated with the Earth Liberation Front, from the word ‘go’. Tracing McGowan’s life and upbringing through his conviction and incarceration, we get to follow his developing activism and militancy against the broader picture of growing militant environmental movement, as he and his colleagues committed various destructive acts across the Pacific northwest in the late 90’s/early 2000’s, until he and the rest were caught back in 2005. The problem in lionizing McGowan is that he isn’t’ terribly likable or sympathetic - he’s mostly unrepentant, pathologically self-centered (i.e. enforces his own behaviors on others, including family members he lives with while on house arrest), and hypocritical, as do most of his confreres. Sure, they committed at least one act worth the risk, the firebombing a slaughterhouse that focused on the killing of wild horses. But they also committed acts against people using bad information, such as the Jefferson Poplar tree farm in Clatskanie, which they burned down because they thought it was fostering genetically modified plants when the owners were doing nothing of the sort (it’s very telling when the perps of that arson can’t even acknowledge that they were wrong and that they targeted completely innocent). But in the end, they come off as young people driven by misplaced idealism and a rampant disregard for the consequences of any of their actions. Still, as a film, it’s worth watching and well put together. Woodchuck sez, “Worth a look.”
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