I was fortunate to find this gem on the MagellanTV service, and immediately knew I wanted to watch it, based on it being a documentary about a succesful environmental campaign to save a piece of wilderness. It´s nice to get to hear about some success sometimes... I can´t remember ever hearing about this campaign, which is weird in itself, but I´m all the more grateful for finally been brought up to speed. It is just a wonderful and hard hitting story of resiliant resistence and connection between humans and nature!
But there are two stories being told parallell to eachother, and I´m not absolutely certain I think that was a good idea? Or if only it should have been executed differently perhaps?
Alongside the story of the campaign in the early 80s, there is a present day story of the son of one of the activists, following in his father´s slipstream as he paddles down the river, like his father did as an element of the campaign.
It´s a nice idea, and his story does add another dimension of time and legacy to the content. But. In order to put these stories parallell, the whole movie is edited in a manner that -to my senses- becomes a little overcrowded, with all those other people involved that are interviewed about their engagement back then, as well as loads of nice archive footage. So much of the movie is about the campaign, that every time it briefly switches over to the guy "alone" on the river,...well, something about it rubs me wrong. It is probably more a matter of editing than it is a matter of the story being out of place.,I guess.
Also -and this might be seen as nitpicking- but the movie uses a trope many docus use, and which I loath. Namely; the guy is allegedly alone on his two week journey down the river. He says so straight out. But it is very obvious that he isn´t, since he´s being filmed. I very, very, immensely prefer filmmaking that does not narrate the camera crew out of story. It doesn´t need to be much, but some disclosure if even in passing, that tell the viewer what is really happening, behind the illusion projected on the screen. I realize that this is a matter of creative storytelling choices, not a matter of anyone actually believing they are fooling viewers into thinking the cameraman isn´t there. Still, to me it feels like a lie when someone accompanied by at least one person (even if maybe only occasionaly meeting up) speaks to the camera about their lonesome journey.
Had this been any other story, I would have taken off one or two more points for the editing and the undercover cameraman, but I can´t give this story any less than a 9!
