This is told with great authenticity and integrity to the Native point of view; "Clearcut" is one of the first, best examples of Indian filmmaking, and it's great to see Native attitudes, values, humor, suffering and wisdom depicted after all those decades of Hollywood shoot-'em-ups.

The Indians in this movie are smart, funny, PO'd and in charge. Hee-yah!

Yes, the film is shocking and has some gruesome scenes. Yes, it's sometimes hard to understand; you have to pay close attention, or watch it more than once. The character of Arthur, superbly played by Graham Greene, is a conjuring of the White lawyer's own contradictory impulses; he wants revenge, and Arthur gives it to him, but then the lawyer doesn't like the revenge he's summoned up. The key scene takes place in a sweat lodge; Arthur is a submerged spirit the lawyer sees in a vision, and having once called him up, he cannot keep the tragedy from unfolding, any more than the ancient Greeks could.

Beware of entertaining the Trickster. He's likely to turn around and trick YOU.

Besides the gory scene of the papermill owner being "debarked" (that is, skinned alive), the film's biggest weakness is that it is a melodrama; this is not, as some have said, a character study. Cliches abound here; we learn nothing of the lawyer's history or personality. He's simply a type -- just as the thieving industrialist is. The title of the film works on two levels; not only is the forest clear cut, so is everything else here, the characters, the value systems, the issues. But that makes the story easier to follow. We know whom to root for, the Indians and the trees.

The cinematography is, as advertised, spectacular, but so are the details of the set decoration, especially in the wise old man's shack on the reservation. He's got pipes but no running water, despite the "improvements" the government promised when it appropriated his land and settled him on the res.

I was privileged to watch this movie with a two-spirited Apache who draws great strength from this film. On the day I wrote this, "Clearcut" was Amazon's #6 bestseller in a town in the Canadian Northwest; that says something important. If the Whites don't always get it, the Natives seem to. Maybe the most important message here is that Graham Greene's become a bona fide star in the world's most glamourous medium, decades after Hollywood told us the Indians were all justly annihilated. I guess the Trickster bites Hollywood, too.++

Be warned: Gruesome scenes.