Product Details

• Actors: Michael Willar, Therry Bannon, Ron Lea, Steve Mousseau, Phil Harns
• Directors: Ryszard Bugajski
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Academy Home Entertainment
• VHS Release Date: December 8, 1993
• Run Time: 98 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302555450
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,981 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Poignant and Enlightening Movie!, May 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Clearcut [VHS] (VHS Tape)

You have to dig deep into your vocabulary to find the superlatives this almost unknown, yet brilliantly done motion picture is worthy of. Director Ryszard Bugajski brings to life this haunting yet mesmerizing tale of civilization gone berserk, and spiritual belief invoked to conquer the encroachment of a ruinous white man's culture on the environment. Set in the Canadian wilderness, this excellent movie captures on film a story of rage, and a harrowing action adventure, in which one man tortures another as punishment for his crimes against the environment. Graham Greene (Dances withWolves, Thunderheart) portrays Arthur, an imposing native American tribesman who is outraged by the destruction of his land from the local lumber mill owned by Bud Rickets (Michael Hogan). Into this wilderness steps Peter McGuire (Ron Lea), a city lawyer, trying to protect native American Indian land through the judicial process, until he meets Arthur. Enraged at the sight of his people's land being ruined, Arthur takes the law into his own hands, kidnapping Peter and Bud Rickets, forcing them into an unrelenting northern trek. This terrifying journey compels Peter to confront his naive liberalism, and causes Arthur to be the martyr in a struggle against a civilization out of control. This relatively low budget production features some outstanding cinematography, and a very revealing glimpse into the spiritual world and culture of Native Americans still living in harmony with their environment. If you are one of the many who missed this gem of a movie, make it a point to see it soon. You will be compelled to watch this one more than once, and it will probably find it's way into your personal library of favorite films, as it has mine. Excellent!

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing, confusing, but i still liked it, May 29, 2001

By	baylor (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Clearcut [VHS] (VHS Tape)

As an Indian, i find some of the other reviews here a bit perplexing, so let me see if i can explain why. i do *not* think this is a movie about logging, the environment or silly New Age slogans such as "raping Mother Earth". Yeah, there's a forest, a white logger and an Indian, but i don't think that's the point of the movie. It most certainly is *not* an environmental statement - there's no kind, gentle, Hollywood, New Age "love Mother Earth" stuff here. It's a much more serious, psychological and sociological profile completely lacking in good guys, kind of like an Indian version of "Falling Down" or maybe "Resevoir Dogs"

The Plot: Arthur, who doesn't want *his* forest cut down (i don't think there's any global environmental statement), but, unlike in other movies, he doesn't decide to show the mysteries of the forest to the logging company, call upon the "good" Whites for help, ask the courts to decide, stage a protest, write a newspaper article or talk to young, environmentally-concious kids who "get it". Instead, he kidnaps the president of the logging company and tortures him. It's nasty too (this movie is not for the squeamish). That's pretty much the movie

This ain't Disney. There is no clear good guy, no obvious message, no feel good ending. It's not a movie that's easy to understand, explain or summarize. If you're White, you might feel sickened, insulted, confused or scared (in my interpretation, it's not Indian vs. logging company, it's Indian vs. Whites in general, or at the very least Whites who don't get it, which includes those who think they do). If you're Indian, well, it's a violent movie but it is a little hard not to sympathize with Arthur.

If i had to say what the core themes of the movie were (and i'm completely guessing here), i'd say that they are: 1. How frustrated some (many?) Indians are with how Whites act (as in "let's kidnap and torture them", not "let's protest and talk of peace and love") and 2. How talking doesn't really work (to say "you're raping mother earth" are just words and tremendously fail to express the true depth of feelings of point #1)

So why i'd give it a 5? i guess it's (a little) like Schindler's List, Three Kings, Being John Malkovich and those other movies that are heavy message, character studies more than they are plot-driven or feel good movies. It's a movie that causes a lot of people to stop and think. It's good for starting conversations, pondering, introspection or getting a reality check. It's a powerful movie. But i honestly don't know how to explain it

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Trickster Strikes Again, June 3, 2002

By	Josh Thomas "Author of 'Murder at Willow Slough'" (West Lafayette, IN, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Clearcut [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I didn't "like" this movie, but I respect it for taking a serious problem (corporate destruction of the environment) and using it to tell a story about one man's love-hate relationship to the problem; he both mourns the lost beauty of nature, and profits from it. Does that remind you of anyone?

This is told with great authenticity and integrity to the Native point of view; "Clearcut" is one of the first, best examples of Indian filmmaking, and it's great to see Native attitudes, values, humor, suffering and wisdom depicted after all those decades of Hollywood shoot-'em-ups.

The Indians in this movie are smart, funny, PO'd and in charge. Hee-yah!

Yes, the film is shocking and has some gruesome scenes. Yes, it's sometimes hard to understand; you have to pay close attention, or watch it more than once. The character of Arthur, superbly played by Graham Greene, is a conjuring of the White lawyer's own contradictory impulses; he wants revenge, and Arthur gives it to him, but then the lawyer doesn't like the revenge he's summoned up. The key scene takes place in a sweat lodge; Arthur is a submerged spirit the lawyer sees in a vision, and having once called him up, he cannot keep the tragedy from unfolding, any more than the ancient Greeks could.

Beware of entertaining the Trickster. He's likely to turn around and trick YOU.

Besides the gory scene of the papermill owner being "debarked" (that is, skinned alive), the film's biggest weakness is that it is a melodrama; this is not, as some have said, a character study. Cliches abound here; we learn nothing of the lawyer's history or personality. He's simply a type -- just as the thieving industrialist is. The title of the film works on two levels; not only is the forest clear cut, so is everything else here, the characters, the value systems, the issues. But that makes the story easier to follow. We know whom to root for, the Indians and the trees.

The cinematography is, as advertised, spectacular, but so are the details of the set decoration, especially in the wise old man's shack on the reservation. He's got pipes but no running water, despite the "improvements" the government promised when it appropriated his land and settled him on the res.

I was privileged to watch this movie with a two-spirited Apache who draws great strength from this film. On the day I wrote this, "Clearcut" was Amazon's #6 bestseller in a town in the Canadian Northwest; that says something important. If the Whites don't always get it, the Natives seem to. Maybe the most important message here is that Graham Greene's become a bona fide star in the world's most glamourous medium, decades after Hollywood told us the Indians were all justly annihilated. I guess the Trickster bites Hollywood, too.++