Get Your Reps In: Graham Greene Leads a Spiritual War in “Clearcut”

Clearcut (1991)

There’s a way of summarizing Clearcut as the journey of white environmental lawyer Peter Maguire (Ron Lea) toward truly understanding the stakes of an Indigenous community’s fight against logging barons. But forget that. If you’re watching Clearcut, you’re there to see Graham Greene.

The legendary First Nations actor plays Arthur, a rifle-toting tribesman who decides that the time for court appeals (Maguire’s specialty) and civil disobedience has long passed. The earliest sign that Arthur isn’t playing around arrives during a boat ride when Maguire lectures Arthur about written versus oral storytelling traditions in Indigenous cultures. Arthur responds by biting the head off a snake, spitting it into the lake, and quipping, “That’s oral tradition.”

In an equally exquisite moment, Greene reclines tranquilly in the boat’s nose, his fingers kissing the black water on either side. It’s the first of many times Polish director Ryszard Bugajski visually communicates Arthur’s near-ghostly unity with the wilderness. It’s not only his land; it’s his movie.

Just one year after Greene starred in Dances With Wolves, his performance in Clearcut is a subversive retort to Wolves’ brand of Hollywood-safe white saviorism. Arthur is as playful as he is brutal, with such gravitational force as to consume the framing narrative and compel Maguire and the audience into a spiritual war. Clinton, Nov. 4.

ALSO PLAYING:

5th Avenue: Monsters University (2013), Nov. 3-5. Cinema 21: Goodfellas (1990), Nov. 4. Cinemagic: Demonic Toys (1992), Nov. 3. Hollywood: Romeo + Juliet (1996), Nov. 6. Programmed to Kill (1987), Nov. 7.