Mario Furloni and Kate McLean’s FREELAND at BENTONVILLE Film Fest REVIEW; deftly delivers a real world harsh on the buzz

Mario Furloni and Kate McLean’s FREELAND BENTONVILLE Film Fest REVIEW; deftly delivers a real world harsh on the buzz

It’s not okay, Boomer.

You dreamed of a day your skills at growing marijuana would be appreciated rather than outlawed. That thing that you were so good at for fun, yet worked so hard at – it could finally be a career!

All those years honed at creating the perfect strain put to good use; and now an ability to hire people to assist, and not smoke on the job?

It sounds like a fantasy.

And of course it is, because maybe you didn’t pay attention to just what’s been happening to family farms over the past few decades. Spoiler alert: whatever the product, the ending is mostly the same.

That’s what’s facing Devi (Krisha Fairchild), in Mario Furloni and Kate McLean’s Freeland, who finds herself slapped with a notice of illegal structures and nuisance on her front fence one morning. As her attorney is quick to note, the county always wants their cut. It’s framed as an issue of building permits, which Devi never obtained because the thought never occurred that her place way up in the woods would be an actual problem. But now her product is blacklisted – none of the other local smokable businesses who want to go legit can afford to touch weed grown by anybody locked in a legal struggle.

But don’t expect one of those Oscar-bait small farmer against cruel local government tales.

No Mark Ruffalo or George Clooney is swooping in to waste all his law firm’s assets on a nigh-unwinnable case and then triumph. The industry and county’s cruelty and indifference are forces of nature here, like time, ripping everything away. (To emphasize that last point, archival-style footage of young Devi partying down and having a blast decades ago serves to break our hearts and wills further.)

Out here in the backwoods – near Four Corners, we’re told, but not specifically where – things move slowly, so there’s plenty of time to see the oncoming train, and even try to face it down. But again, Devi’s lawyer is no heroic movie star, and it’s his duty to advise that appeals are usually a complete waste of money. And that’s pretty much the last we see of him.

Shot on actual marijuana farms, Freeland, co-directed and written by Furloni (cinematographer, Crip Camp) and McLean (producer of the documentary Bill Nye: Science Guy) mostly offers a slice of life that, even while slower paced than the city, will ultimately pass its elders by regardless. They offer no answers; just a sense that the world goes on even when we might wish it would stop. Devi reminisces with the folks she grew up with, parties with the youngsters who work on her farm, and tries to find the money to keep paying everyone. We linger lovingly round her home fires, and despair at her setbacks. Meanwhile, a mysterious, anonymous would-be buyer begins sending strange texts.

Fairchild, who most recently appeared in Waves, has the face of life experience and the aura of someone who’s been undeservedly passed by. For Devi, it may be too late, For the actress who plays her, Freeland should get more than a little recognition.

Furloni’s cinematography, clearly inspired by his documentary work, varies between static establishing vistas of tree-covered mountains, and handheld for more intimate interactions. Mostly it works well, when the tripod is used for wide vistas and the handheld for subjectively stoned points of view, but at times, the odd establishing shot that shakes a little feels like a Brechtian break of the fourth wall. Intentionally or not, it makes the invisible hand of the cinematographer more conspicuous. Fortunately, the performers never break character, so the acting always keeps it real.

For a movie all about harvesting the herb that makes you happy, this probably sounds like a lot of harsh on the buzz. But the harsh is reality – the benefits of legalization are so obvious that the downside of corporatization doesn’t get talked about so much. No doubt someone like Willie Nelson, metaphorical patron saint of both pot smoking and Farm Aid, put two and two together a long time ago. But for Devi, and the audience that grows to feel for her, it’s a sad, inevitable, necessary lesson.

Mario Furloni and Kate McLean’s FREELAND BENTONVILLE Film Fest REVIEW; deftly delivers a real world harsh on the buzz