Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern

US (1995): Documentary

Filmmaker Jeanne Jordan and her husband/coworker Steven Ascher decided to turn a 1990 visit to Jordan's parents -- lifelong Iowa farmers -- into the beginnings of a personal, self-deprecating film essay about one chapter in the plight of American family farms. Besieged with bank debt and ignored by a marketplace that favors huge corporate crop growers, the Jordans call it quits after spending their entire lives helping to feed this nation. Rather than rant about it, however, Jordan, who narrates the film and is often seen on camera with the rest of her rallying relatives, creates with Ascher a bemused, cinematic sigh over the decline of rural family life and the heroic dreams that fuel it. Watching as her parents silently watch old Westerns on TV -- the elder couple's favorite pastime -- Jordan notes how a life spent in heroic accord with the seasons (and on the wrong end of the global economy) is like the life of a movie cowboy who takes his stands and faces his showdowns. As we witness the Jordans dismantle their lives, resign themselves to retirement, and auction off most of their things, the family's sadness is palpable. But so is a certain bittersweet freedom that comes with change. In the end, Troublesome Creek is not only about farming but about the mutable nature, for better or worse, of everything in American life. (Tom Keogh, Amazon.com)

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1 nomination