Bisbee '17

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Bisbee '17
Bisbee '17 poster.jpg
Directed by Robert Greene
Produced by Douglas Tirola
Susan Bedusa
Bennett Elliott [1]
CinematographyJarred Alterman
Music by Keegan DeWitt
Release dates
  • January 20, 2018 (2018-01-20)(Sundance Film Festival)
  • September 5, 2018 (2018-09-05)
Running time
112 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Box office $117,470

Bisbee '17 (also Bisbee '17: A Story Told in Six Chapters [2] ) is a 2018 American film directed by Robert Greene. Partially documentary and partially based on a true story Western, it reflects on the events of the 1917 Bisbee Deportation, 100 years later; it is set in Bisbee, Arizona, both in 1917 and 2017.

Contents

Synopsis

Five years after its statehood and a few months after the United States' entry into World War I, xenophobia and anti-unionism is growing in the southernmost towns of Arizona near the Mexican border. In Bisbee, immigrant workers organized and were violently rounded up and transported to the desert in New Mexico; not as famous as the events in nearby Tombstone, the deportation didn't live in the national memory, but is quietly remembered by the townsfolk today. And so at the 100 year anniversary, Bisbee citizens organized a re-enactment. The events unfold again, as if they were happening in 1917, framed alongside interviews with the present day locals. [3]

Bisbee 1916.jpg
Panoramic view of Bisbee, Arizona, in 1916, shortly before the Bisbee Deportation

Production

Multiple producers are listed for the film, they are, alphabetically: Susan Bedusa, Dan Cogan, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Bennett Elliott, Davis Guggenheim, Laurene Powell Jobs, Jenny Raskin, Jonathan Silberberg, Nicole Stott, Douglas Tirola, Scott Woelfel, and Stacey Woelfel. [4]

The cast are local people, with a lot of focus placed on Fernando Serrano, a young Mexican-American who became the face of the film. His performance has been praised by several critics. [5]

The film was scored by Keegan DeWitt, with Vox saying that the score "sounds ripped from a ghost movie, spiky and glassy and a little dissonant", but that it fits the tone of the film. [2]

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 93% based on reviews from 60 critics . The site's critical consensus reads, "Bisbee '17 offers one town's reckoning with its own history as a compelling argument that the mistakes of the past are truly corrected only when they're faced head on." [6] It is listed as a "must see" with "universal acclaim" on Metacritic, having an 87 average from 22 reviews. [7]

Writing for RogerEbert.com, Matt Zoller Seitz gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, praising its exploration of more than just the event itself and for the use of certain images, saying about both that "a series of shots of carved-out quarry rock, the multicolored layers stacked up in the frame become metaphors for the movie you're watching, one of many that Bisbee '17 supplies as it goes along". He also wrote that Errol Morris was clearly a big influence on the film. [5]

Vanity Fair looked closer at the interviews with Bisbee residents, and compared the debate with the nation's present political situation in 2017; it notes that some of the views are "disconcerting" but is glad that the film doesn't make judgement. [8] Alissa Wilkinson of Vox.com also compared the past with the present, calling the film an "unsettling cipher for America". [2]

The film's use of acting within its narrative has been compared to the other Greene films Actress and Kate Plays Christine by multiple reviewers. [3] [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bisbee, Arizona</span> City in Cochise County, Arizona, US

Bisbee is a city in and the county seat of Cochise County in southeastern Arizona, United States. It is 92 miles (148 km) southeast of Tucson and 11 miles (18 km) north of the Mexican border. According to the 2020 census, the population of the town was 4,923, down from 5,575 in the 2010 census.

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Phelps Dodge Corporation was an American mining company founded in 1834 as an import-export firm by Anson Greene Phelps and his two sons-in-law William Earle Dodge, Sr. and Daniel James. The latter two ran Phelps, James & Co., the part of the organization based in Liverpool, England. The import-export firm at first exported United States cotton from the Deep South to England and imported various metals to the US needed for industrialization. With the expansion of the Western frontier in North America, the corporation acquired mines and mining companies, including the Copper Queen Mine in Cochise County, Arizona and the Dawson, New Mexico coal mines. It operated its own mines and acquired railroads to carry its products. By the late 19th century, it was known as a mining company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Edward Campbell</span> American politician (1878–1944)

Thomas Edward Campbell was the second governor of the state of Arizona, United States. He was the first Republican and first native-born governor elected after Arizona achieved statehood in 1912.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Warren Ballpark</span> Baseball stadium in Bisbee, Arizona

Warren Ballpark is a baseball stadium located in Bisbee, Arizona. The ballpark was recently home to the Tucson Saguaros of the Pecos League and the Bisbee-Douglas Copper Kings of the independent Arizona–Mexico League The Stadium was built in 1909 by the Calumet and Arizona Mining Company as a recreation for the miners and their families, pre-dating the construction of Chicago's Wrigley Field by nearly five years. It is currently the home of Bisbee Killer Termites and Bisbee High School Pumas baseball and football teams.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bisbee Deportation</span> 1917 illegal deportation of miners attempting unionization in Arizona, United States

The Bisbee Deportation was the illegal kidnapping and deportation of about 1,300 striking mine workers, their supporters, and citizen bystanders by 2,000 members of a deputized posse, who arrested them beginning on July 12, 1917, in Bisbee, Arizona. The action was orchestrated by Phelps Dodge, the major mining company in the area, which provided lists of workers and others who were to be arrested to the Cochise County sheriff, Harry C. Wheeler. Those arrested were taken to a local baseball park before being loaded onto cattle cars and deported 200 miles (320 km) to Tres Hermanas in New Mexico. The 16-hour journey was through desert without food and with little water. Once unloaded, the deportees, most without money or transportation, were warned against returning to Bisbee. The US government soon brought in members of the US Army to assist with relocating the deportees to Columbus, New Mexico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anti-Mexican sentiment</span> Discrimination

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Harry Cornwall Wheeler was an Arizona lawman who was the third captain of the Arizona Rangers, as well as the sheriff of Cochise County, serving from 1912 into 1918. He is known as the lead figure in the illegal mass kidnapping and deportation of some 1200 miners and family members, many of them immigrants, from Bisbee, Arizona to New Mexico in 1917. Beginning on July 12, 1917, he took total control of the town of Bisbee, controlling access and running kangaroo courts that deported numerous people.

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References

  1. "Bisbee '17 About" . Retrieved 23 March 2019.
  2. 1 2 3 "Bisbee '17 is a ghost story, by way of a documentary about a 1917 deportation". Vox. 25 January 2018. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
  3. 1 2 Scott, A. O. (4 September 2018). "Review: In 'Bisbee '17,' Anti-Union Violence Haunts an Arizona Town". The New York Times. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
  4. "Bisbee '17 Full Cast & Crew". IMDb. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
  5. 1 2 3 Matt Zoller Seitz (2018). "Bisbee '17, 2018". Roger Ebert.com. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
  6. "Bisbee '17". Rotten Tomatoes . Fandango . Retrieved 30 October 2021.
  7. "Bisbee '17". Metacritic . Retrieved 24 March 2019.
  8. "A Small Town's Sordid Past Becomes Present in Bisbee '17". Vanity Fair . 9 September 2018. Retrieved 24 March 2019.