BRIGHT LEAVES

Ross McElwee has long engaged in a comic, rearguard action of propping up the patriarchy, and in this case he extends the defense upward to his great grandfather and downward to himself, vis-à-vis his son. Ostensibly focusing on his familys undervalued role in developing the North Carolina tobacco industry, the filmmaker meanders with playful digressiveness from the harmful effects of cigarettes to Patricia Neals affair with Gary Cooper, from swimming the English Channel to melodrama versus cinema vérité. The point is to hang out with he reflective McElwee, sharing his homesick, Zen-like pleasure at watching the world especially the South, and his rueful anxiety at trying to parse its meaning. (Phillip Lopate)