'Konelīne: our land beautiful' is a landmark film
REVIEW: Winner of the Best Canadian Feature at Hot Docs 2016
By Brian D. Johnson, Macleans June 8, 2016
Northern lights on the North West Transmission Line / a scene from Konelīne: our land beautiful
KONELĪNE: our land beautiful, which won Best Canadian Documentary at Toronto's Hot Docs festival, is a landmark film. Its hard to think of another environmental documentary that has portrayed the sanctity of the wilderness and those who prey on it with such a magnanimous spirit without muddying the issues.
This exquisite film doesn't follow the template of your ordinary environmental doc, with a morality tale pitting noble First Nations against rapacious industrialists. Instead it rolls out an epic canvas populated with miners, hunters, diamond drillers, Indigenous elders, salmon fishermen, transmission tower linemen, outfitter guides on horseback -- each of them staking a personal claim to the land. Whether drilling holes in the rock or sewing beads on baby moccasins, they all come across as sympathetic characters with a profound affection for the wilderness. The usual/white/Indigenous stereotypes simply dont hold: a pair of white trophy hunters armed with bows and arrows camp in a teepee and stalk mountain sheep to no avail, while two Indigenous hunters in a pick-up truck casually bring down a moose with a high-powered rifle and butcher it for meat.
Transmission tower linemen caught in the backwash of a helicopter / a scene from Konelīne: our land beautiful
There are scenes of transcendent, breathtaking spectacle including one of the horses being forced to swim the massive and turbulent Stikine River, as a motorboat churns through rapids to pull them to the far shore. But the most striking visual is of the world's biggest helicopter lowering a 16,000-lb transmission tower into position as a crew of linemen -- leaning into the gale-force backwash of the rotors -- struggle to nudge the base of the tower into its slot amid a whirlwind of debris. Out of such an elemental havoc, something transcendent emerges.
With a bare minimum of talking heads, (director Nettie Wild) lets the camera hunt for art in every frame, mining veins of abstract beauty rather than sharp nuggets of political narrative. Her narrative roams among half a dozen loose storylines with an associative rhythm that she likens to jazz. And whether the camera is fixed on the glass-eyed stare of a stuffed trophy animal in a lodge, or an iridescent pillow of blood draining from a freshly killed moose, she allows every image an ecumenical grace.
Watch: KONELĪNE: our land beautiful Trailer [1]