R.T. Thorne’s debut film, the post-apocalyptic thriller “40 Acres”, is the kind of movie you leave needing to tell someone about. A taut, deeply felt, entertaining, insightful, and emotionally raw experience; “40 Acres” is what we go to the movies to see; the human condition in all its myriad forms fighting to find its way in a world of chaos and blood. If I could, I would reprogram at least 25% of theaters across the country to switch from playing the new dinosaur movie stomping its lumbering, pointless corpse across multi-plexes for this; a simple movie about complicated people, a bloody movie steeped in the joy of family, a fantastic movie that I know I will be proselytizing about for quite a while.
“40 Acres” begins with a setup that usually includes zombie-like creatures of the Romero or fungal variety. Over a decade ago, a viral infection killed 98% of animals around the world. A few years later, a civil war broke out due to a lack of food. A few years after that, the most precious commodity in the world is farmland. The farm in question, tucked away amid the Fall foliage of Canada’s woodlands, has been owned by the same family for almost 150 years, our eponymous 40 acres. The Freemans, descendants of an enslaved man from Georgia who fled to Canada in hopes of raising a family to last in the free North, have built for themselves a hermit nation among the neighboring properties, fortified and armed, with enough firepower to make John Wick blink twice, to defend themselves and their property from desperate scavengers. The matriarch of our family, Hailey Freeman (Danielle Deadwyler in a performance that left me shellshocked), has leveraged the military training of herself and her husband, Sarge (Michael Greyeyes), to ensure their children can survive a world that is actively trying to take what they have worked hard to build. Her policy with neighboring farms is cautious to the point of isolation, and her devotion to preparing her children borders on the fanatical, yet can you blame her? In a world gone mad, niceties might get you killed, and nobility certainly will. Every night on the radio, Hailey hears more and more of her neighbors succumbing to famine or cannibals or simply disappearing off the face of the Earth. The land is all that matters and despite her son Manny’s (Kataem O’Connor) insistence that the family has an obligation to share what they have to offer with those who need it, Hailey remains vigilant and steadfast; a rock breaking the flow of a mighty river with it’s stubborn insistence that she can forever weather the onslaught. Yet, as in every contest between stone and water, the raging rapids always win; and the world outside has a date with the Freeman farm whether Hailey wants it to or not. The only thing left to do is hunker down, perhaps learn to trust what she doesn’t know, and prepare to defend what matters most from those who might ravage it to dust.
Anyone with half an American history education, which is frankly even less than I would like to admit, knows what “40 Acres and a Mule” means in the aftermath of the American Civil War and the dissolution of the nation’s formal policy of slavery. Initially, presented as a wartime reparation, African American families were offered 40 acres of land and a mule to help assist their transition from enslavement to freedom. This policy was later rescinded through the order of abysmally racist “President via Assassination” Andrew Johnson, and many formerly enslaved families were left to fend for themselves without land to till or reparations to help build their lives. “40 Acres” is thematically steeped in the aftermath of promises made and undelivered, a legacy of double-crosses and bad bargains that left people deemed unworthy of being called “real Americans” scrabbling for crumbs while a white ruling class violated the conquered land for sport. The Freemans, a family made up of both African American and First Nations ancestry, are devoted to retaining their cultural autonomy from beneath the bootheel of history, teaching their children literature, sociology, and the language of their ancestors. There is a scene in the film where Michael Greyeyes’ Sarge, a man of Plains Cree heritage, scolds his daughters for scavenging packets of fast food BBQ sauce in plastic packets. Beyond his disgust at eating fifteen-year-old BBQ-like ooze, the concept of diluting his family’s recipes with the colonizer’s burger sauce is an abomination. This family has together built something better than what was; something more violent and savage than before by necessity, but one that is wholly their own. In a world returned to its most natural form, I can imagine that any reminder of the genocidal past would be unwelcome. It seems no mistake that the BBQ packet is from a King-based fast food joint and that Sarge’s solution is to burn it for good measure.
By the way, Happy Fourth, everyone.
In his feature directorial debut, R.T. Thorne deftly spins the themes of cultural destruction and family into a story that is as beautiful as it is confidently constructed, with performances from every member of the cast that are as deeply felt as in any film currently in theaters. At the center of it all is Danielle Deadwyler, providing a powerhouse performance of a mother ready to destroy the rest of the world to protect her little corner of it, with more pain and desire in a sidelong glance than most performances could conjure in a lifetime. This is a movie star performance in a film stocked to the brim with characters you can’t help but fall in love with, unlike a certain hundred-million-dollar dinosaur movie release that shall go nameless. The family feels like our own, and when they are hurt, shot, stabbed, or otherwise in peril, I felt it in my gut. Beyond the emotional honesty of the performances, the filmmaking itself is masterful. Thorne creates dozens of unique, substantively rich images throughout the film, painting with the cool autumn warmth of the Canadian wilderness and casting violence with the buzz of ill-gotten blood and decay beneath flickering fluorescents. A standout sequence of the film features Sarge attacking a group of invading cannibals in the dark with nothing but his skills and a knife. The scene, lit only by strobing gunfire, is more enthralling than any modern CGI dinosaurs ever could be and much more worth your attention. I usually don’t take this much time to stump for one movie over another on here, but since everyone on the planet is either shooting fireworks or paying cold cash to see the second-worst Jurassic Park sequel this weekend, I figure some campaigning might be warranted.
“40 Acres” is the best kind of apocalypse film: one that uses the trappings of the genre to explore something more complex. The manner of this world’s end is largely irrelevant; it is simply a conduit to exacerbate anxieties that have been slithering beneath the skin-thin surface of polite society for hundreds of years. And the film is anything but subtle. When cannibals slip through the battlements of a farm late in the film, their leader wears an animal headdress, and the invaders bear a resemblance to a certain insurrection that history seems to want to forget. But forgetting is a choice, one we relent to if we refuse to walk backward through history and instead pretend the desecrations of the past are simply fairy stories that can’t hurt us. Though an assuredly Canadian film, “40 Acres” shows us the best and worst of our human natures, plotting a path to liberation through the once very American idea that our children will be better than we are; that they will carry the best of us like a candle to guide their path into the ever-darkening future. A flimsy bill of goods certainly, perhaps as flimsy as the acres once promised to the formerly enslaved persons of this nation, but maybe not. That’s for us to decide, I suspect; “We The People”.
“40 Acres” is a fantastic film, one that I will race the streets Revere-like proclaiming for everyone to see. This Fourth of July weekend, do yourself a favor and spend some time with the Freemans.
You’ll be glad you did.
“40 Acres” is playing at Prytania Canal Place AND (I rarely do this) AMC Elmwood and Westbank.
