If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (2011)
Average Rating: 7/10
Reviews Counted: 32
Fresh: 28 | Rotten: 4
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Average Rating: 6.6/10
Critic Reviews: 15
Fresh: 12 | Rotten: 3
No consensus yet.
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Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 1,338
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Filmmaker Marshall Curry explores the inner workings of the Earth Liberation Front, a revolutionary movement devoted to crippling facilities involved in deforestation, while simultaneously offering a profile of Oregon ELF member Daniel McGowan, who was brought up on terrorism charges for his involvement with the radical group. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
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All Critics (32) | Top Critics (15) | Fresh (28) | Rotten (4) | DVD (2)
It's tempting to watch If a Tree Falls doc about a scraggly group of ecoterrorists with a chip of skepticism on your shoulder. Yet the film creates a fantastic moral ambivalence.
Top CriticCurry tells a compelling tale about the differences of opinion over what constitutes desperate measures, and how readily we throw around a term like terrorism.
Watching it may not change anyone's ideology, but it will force you to see the players as complex people with understandable motivations.
The problem is that the heart of the movie is McGowan. He's just not a very compelling figure.
The gripping documentary If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front offers an intimate look at the radical environmental group.
Unless you are a true believer in the tenets of deep ecology, the film may seem more like an apology for the group's dangerous activities.
As emotive and far-reaching as the issues involved are, this incisive feature is most potent when capturing Daniel McGowan's life and mind dismantling.
Now locked down as a terrorist in America's CMU system, ELF activist Daniel McGowan lit more than a few fires.
The film is a fascinating look inside a little-known arm of the larger environmental movement.
An earnest and even-handed documentary about a naive and whiny mild-mannered thirtysomething ecology activist.
Considerably more thought-provoking than expected.
Although kind to the plights of activists who face hard time for victimless crimes, this film is balanced -- conservatives could easily interpret it as validation of the group's persecution.
McGowan's views on the environment have taken several turns, but none of them is illustrated in the film, in which he comes off as passive and a little whiny.
An intelligent look at civil disobedience and the official criminalization of enviros who take peaceful demonstrations one step further.
"If a Tree Falls" never loses sight of the human beings at the heart of the conflict -- no matter what side of the conflict they're on.
Gets a bit bogged down in legal and procedural details during its final 30 minutes but it will, hopefully, open eyes and hearts.
It serves an important purpose in calling attention to environmental issues. In today's political climate, environmentalism only gets discussed in the context of job creation or monetary savings.
The story of how a muscular anti-logging campaign devolved into sectarian turmoil that shot off radicalized cells like burning cinders is ultimately what drives the film and makes it so rewarding
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June 24, 2011:
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The documentary explores another failed bit of communication which is the word terrorist and how overused it has become. As McGowan says, what he did was just property destruction, wherein nobody got hurt, even though it is inferred that the ELF was taking on more sinister aims before it shattered. So, just because a person is more afraid after being mugged, does that make it terrrorism, too?