Bisbee '17 (2018)
Directed by Robert
Greene
Impact Partners Film,
112 minutes, PG-13.
★★★
 |
| Fernando Serrano |
When a vigilante band expels 1,300 strikers from a company
town, what's the story? Is it the company? The loyalists? The strikers? Is it
about how the past informs the present? Or is it some other factor such as
ethnicity, immigration status, or social justice?
In 1880, the Phelps Dodge conglomerate found gold, silver,
and loads of copper in a remote part of Arizona. The town of Bisbee sprung
forth to straddle the pits Phelps Dodge opened. It became a classic one-industry
town and remained so until 1975, when the last mine closed. Today Bisbee has
about 5,600 citizens; once it had nearly 10,000. If it has a future, it will
come from cafés, tourism, and the arts. Many locals are either suspicious of or
openly oppose the newcomers, which is to say that part of town is Trump territory
and the other half progressive. And so history repeats itself.
Bisbee '17 is a
double entendre title from director Robert Greene. His film wrapped in 2017as
he was shooting scenes in which locals speculated about the town's future minus
Phelps Dodge. It was also when President Trump announced his no-exceptions
expulsion policy toward illegal aliens. But the film's hook is what happened in
Bisbee in 1917.
In brief, the radical (in rhetoric) Industrial Workers of
the World (IWW) led a miners' strike. It wasn't difficult to convince hard rock
miners that they toiled long hours for little pay under some of the dirtiest
and most dangerous conditions imaginable. Some of the strikers were immigrants,
many had grown up in Bisbee, and some of their sympathizers owned local
businesses. Phelps Dodge's response was, shall we say, unique. On July 12,
1917, a hastily deputized force under a company stooge, Sheriff Harry C.
Wheeler, staged an early morning raid that rounded up strikers and their
allies. They were herded into bullpens, loaded into boxcars, railroaded 200
miles distant to a New Mexico dessert near the Mexican border, and dumped out
with neither food nor water. It is a miracle that just two people died: a deputy
making an arrest and the man he tried to put into custody. The Bisbee Deportation
is one of those many buried tales from the labor wars. We don't read about it
in history books because it doesn't mesh well with American freedom narratives
to discuss miscarriages of justice at the hands of legal officials. The irony is
that those legal officials sanctioned grossly illegal acts such as kidnapping, violations of the Fifth and
Fourteenth amendments, and suspension of habeas corpus.
How to present all of this? Greene opts for a complex, but
only partially successful mix of documentary, dramatization, and historical
reenactment. His is an interesting approach, but when you trifurcate a
narrative, some things will fall by the wayside. I opened with a set of
questions to raise the essential issue of focus. Greene does some things very
well. His opening shot is quite clever. A man with a walky-talky stands in
front of the local high school directing traffic so it won't interfere with the
film crew. Except there isn't any traffic! Bisbee 2017 isn't exactly a dead
town, but it's coughing up blood. When a one-industry town becomes a
no-industry town, a substantial part of the population will move on, especially
if the town is in a place where few would choose to live except to collect a
paycheck. Sure, some folks have roots there and call it home but even they use
terms like "quiet" to describe Bisbee. They are, of course, the same
ones who are nervous about those moving into town to take advantage of cheap
rents and roll the die that maybe they'll catch a renaissance wave. Plus who
loves cheap rent more than the metaphorical starving artist?
Newcomers also have a habit of digging up skeletons. Is it a
good idea or a bad one to commemorate an infamous event? And old labor song is
titled "Which Side Are You On?" In Bisbee that pretty much means you
miss the Phelps Dodge Corporation, or you think they were robber barons that
only cared about what they could extract from the earth and those who shifted
it. To tell that tale, Greene finds lessons in the Bisbee Deportation. He could
have opted for a searing exposé-style documentary heavy on historical photos
and artifacts. Alternatively, he could have done a costumed dramatization. He
does both–sort of. The present/past/present structure of Greene's film is
perhaps too meta for its own good. We learn about the Deportation, but we also
see footage of a locals grappling with it. There are also scenes of costumed
actors portraying figures from 1917, but they go in and out of character and
are interviewed about both the Deportation and their feelings about the
character they play and those with whom they interact. Got that? Bisbee '17 too often comes across as a
good-natured pageant about distant events.
That is, when it's not force-fit commentary on today's
immigration debates. Greene is correct to see parallels between 1917 and Trump's
ship-'em-back-to-Mexico mentality, but he undercuts the historical record. The
number one issue in Bisbee during 1917 was the IWW, not immigration. To be
sure, America was on the cusp of immigration restriction in 1917 and often
equated radicals and the foreign-born, but Phelps Dodge mainly cared about its
right to do whatever the hell it pleased and the IWW stood in its path.
Greene's film is bold but uneven. He earns kudos, though,
for unearthing willowy Mexican-American actor Fernando Serrano. He does not
look like a miner and one's first impression is disbelief, but Serrano commands
a range that takes us beyond the surface. Hats off to Greene also for making a
film that violates the usual documentary conventions. He doesn't necessarily do
justice to history, but his film has enough moments of innovation and insight
to hold our interest.
Bisbee '17 is
playing in small art cinemas, but it's also available for streaming.
Rob Weir
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