If one believes the spin that director Brett Harvey’s The Union puts on the distribution and inhalation of cannabis in Canada, then one must accept that a) the vast majority of the nation’s politicians, doctors, lawyers and social-reformists want pot made legal, and b) most Canadians are high all the time.
Over a fascinating but comically-lopsided 104 minutes of pro-hemp propaganda, Harvey portrays the province of British Columbia (where the bulk of the film shot), as rife with marijuana 'grow-ops’ – basement hydro-gardens where your average suburbanite can turn a US$20,000 annual profit from the buds of as few as eight mature plants. The film presents government statistics that estimate as many as 1 home in every 100 is cultivating 'B.C. Bud’, the local crop that fetches as much as US$3,000 a pound in southern U.S. cities.
To Harvey’s credit, his film is not totally consumed with the arguments about the legalisation of recreational smoking. Some of the film’s best moments include a dazzling, highly amusing opening sequence that tracks the role that hemp has played in the establishment of American society (it was the number one crop in the U.S. for 150 years, used to make everything from ropes to dresses, medicine to paper – the first two copies of The Declaration of Independence were printed on hemp paper).
A parade of highly-credentialed scholars, medical practitioners, law enforcement officials, economic analysts and pro-gunja journalists makes for a dizzying barrage of pseudo-facts and compelling statistics, all in favour of the Great Green Industrial Revolution. And particularly cute is the film-makers use of old film clips to accentuate the narration, footage from anti-dope films of the 40s and 50s and a chat with The Lord of the Bongs, Tommy Chong.
But The Union – the term used to define the intricately-structured US$7billion underground dope industry that exists in Canada – is from the new school of 'documentary’ that has flourished since Michael Moore’s oeuvre hit big - Roger & Me (1989), Bowling For Columbine (2002)and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004). All fine films and hugely enjoyable, but like The Union, ultimately undone by unbalanced, self-serving, smart-alecky rhetoric. These types of films preach to the converted, mocking and deriding those that oppose the filmmaker’s views (rather than inviting debate) to make their crucial points more succinctly. These types of factually-blurry films reinforce the anti-establishment sentiment of a great many (as Moore’s box office success attests to), but offer no coherent alternate points.
Filmmakers like Moore and Harvey need to take that next step as documentarians and demand action via their films (as Errol Morris did with The Thin Blue Line, 1988), or choose subject matter that will do it for them (Barbara Kopple’s insider view of the Dixie Chicks' political commitment, Shut Up & Sing, 2006).
The Union: The Business Of Getting High is never less than fun and informative, but it could and should have been far more incendiary. What the cause needed was a skunk bonfire, sending a haze of smoke across the world. What it got was a Brett Harvey joint, amounting to little more than a doobie passed between friends.
