Bisbee '17

Name: Bisbee '17
Genre: Western, Documentary
Released: September 5, 2018
Duration: 112 min
Rating: 87
Cast: Aaron Gain, Annie Graeme-Larkin, Benjamin Joel Caron, Charles Bethea, Chris Dietz

2018

METASCORE

Universal acclaim based on 22 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Mixed or average reviews based on 8 Ratings

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5.0	User Score Mixed or average reviews based on 8 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

4th Row Films | Release Date: September 5, 2018 | Not Rated

Starring: Aaron Gain, Annie Graeme-Larkin, Benjamin Joel Caron, Charles Bethea, Chris Dietz, Dick Graeme, Doug Graeme, James West, Ken Boe, Mary Ellen Dunlap, Mike Anderson, Richard Graeme Iii

Summary: An old mining town on the Arizona-Mexico border finally reckons with its darkest day: the deportation of 1200 immigrant miners exactly 100 years ago. Locals collaborate to stage recreations of their controversial past.

Director: Robert Greene

Genre(s): Western, Documentary

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 112 min

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Critic Reviews

100

Chuck Bowen

Sep 5, 2018

The film's epic canvas invigorates Robert Greene, who fuses a procedural documentary, in the key of Frederick Wiseman’s films, with tableaux that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror western. Read full review

Andrew Crump

Oct 3, 2018

As the crimes of the deportation haunts Bisbee and its inhabitants, so, too, are we haunted by them through the filter of Greene’s lens. But that experience, the experience of being haunted, proves vital. Maybe it’s necessary to let history haunt us. If we don’t, we’ll never be able to move beyond it. Read full review

Justin Chang

Sep 26, 2018

One of the pleasurable discoveries of this continually surprising movie is that artifice can be the most direct route to the truth. Read full review

RogerEbert.com Matt Zoller Seitz

Sep 5, 2018

Bisbee '17 is also about the artifice of storytelling and the alchemy of acting, and that magic moment when we decide to forget that we're seeing performers pretending to be long-dead people. Read full review

IndieWire David Ehrlich

Aug 29, 2018

The result is a singularly American riff on “The Act of Killing,” a fascinating and dream-like mosaic that’s less driven by residual anger than by cockeyed concern, less interested in exhuming the past than in revealing its value to the present. Read full review

Joshua Rothkopf

Sep 30, 2018

How filmmaker Robert Greene got an entire town to ham it up remains a mystery, but his gift for inviting self-interrogation (also on display in his equally fascinating Kate Plays Christine, a 2016 hybrid about an actor’s plunge into the life of a suicidal newscaster) marks him as an innovator who may become a future Errol Morris. Read full review

Mike D'Angelo

Sep 4, 2018

This one transforms practically the whole of Bisbee into a memorably uneasy amateur theatrical production. Read full review

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User Reviews

jdrlabor

Aug 26, 2021

This is a movie to up your game for: be ready with a few small critical notes. That it’s 2017 goes back in time to understand 1917. That vigilantes and hyper patriots live in both eras and incline toward extremism to defend the “homeland.” Imagine a time when a single metal, copper, definedThis is a movie to up your game for: be ready with a few small critical notes. That it’s 2017 goes back in time to understand 1917. That vigilantes and hyper patriots live in both eras and incline toward extremism to defend the “homeland.” Imagine a time when a single metal, copper, defined wealth and technological efficiency (like rare earth in the cell phone age). Then add the US-Mexican border and formative labor relations in the rough southwest. If you keep all this in mind your vision will expand to the dimensions operating all at once in this brilliant flick.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

SteveSandberg

Sep 18, 2018

The rule of law rests on a foundation of due process. The deportation involved no due process and therefore can't be said to have been legitimized by the rule of law. As the movie points out, the deportation relied instead on a legal concept called the Law of Necessity: a self-justificationThe rule of law rests on a foundation of due process. The deportation involved no due process and therefore can't be said to have been legitimized by the rule of law. As the movie points out, the deportation relied instead on a legal concept called the Law of Necessity: a self-justification engaged in by the town after the fact, used to rationalize the extra-legal removal by a deputized, armed mob of both the workers and (most revealingly) other residents who opposed the action.... About the Law of Necessity, suffice it to say that it is the sham-legal shield of lynch mobs in all times and places.… Expand

2 of 5 users found this helpful23

DeplorableDude

Sep 14, 2018

The movie's summary says the town's worst day apparently because they deported 1200 people who we assume aren't citizens. So the rule of law was upheld. And this is... a bad thing?

3 of 10 users found this helpful37

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