Spitball Army

9.2
[blu-ray]

Wow.

The portion of this film that most closely resembles the previous work of Bill Morrison (such as DECASIA) comes at the very end and is relatively brief. But it is a dramatic coda to a “you wouldn’t believe it if I told you” tale that begins in the unspoiled Canadian frontier of the 1800s and ends at the Library of Congress in the late 20th century, managing to encompass the Yukon Gold Rush, the science of nitrate film, the displacement of an indigenous tribe, the meteorite rise and eventual decline of a mining boom town, the origins of the Trump family fortune, the early formative days of cinema showmen Sid Grauman and Alexander Pantages, the fate of hundreds of forgotten silent films, and the fortunate caution of a backhoe operator. This is one heady swirl of an historical documentary and, by its end, I wept.