i stumbled across this on the internet, and i’m still not really sure how i feel about it.
i’d watch it first before reading my thoughts, i don’t want to taint you. it’s around 25 minutes, just to give you fair warning.
on a personal level, i’m really excited to see this. it start out with a former neighbor, who i always referred to as the mayor of woodbridge , the neighborhood i used to live in. i also know the gentleman with white hair and earrings who does most of the speaking. he used to live in a house i also used to live in. he was still living there when i first starting hang out, and while he doesn’t really look like it in this movie, he used to always remind myself and ma of bob from twin peaks. if you’ve seen twin peaks you know that bob is about the creepiest character ever. we avoided him, since then we have found him to be a very nice man. my intern soilseed is also briefly in this movie. many of the shots take place in my neighborhood, some of the shots of goats are my neighbors, and there are shots of vacant lots around my house.
i can’t help but feel a certain level of exploitation of the city though. yes, things are really bad here, but the only shots they show are vacant lots, empty buildings, scrappers, a few lone individuals pushing shopping carts.
i for one am not unhappy about the rewilding of the city. i’m happy for the vacant lots, the pheasants, the trees, the rabbits. but i just keep feeling as though this movie wants you to take pity on the city, not take joy in that transformation. it seems to take a certain level of joy of pointing at the decline of the city,but is this really decline? is this maybe progress? I feel the images of wildlife are gorgeous, i love having rabbits, pheasants, and foxes in the city. ma and i even go on walks tracking the pheasants (made easier as of late on account of the snow so we can follow the tracks). but the balance of the wildlife to the people and the city seems out of step. somehow most of the characters just seem downtrodden, solo individuals walking alone though a desolate wasteland. while i can’t deny that some aspect of this are accurate, it’s certainly not a full picture of the city. in the end i guess i feel as though there have been enough documentaries about how messed up detroit is, how about one about all the people taking control of their own lives and creating the world they want to see, the world they want to live in. that’s the detroit i live in.
little house on the urban prairie 