Documentary tells tale of logger’s riveting epiphany
Hadwin’s Judgement traces steps leading to a desperate act
HADWIN’S JUDGEMENT
Documentary Directed by: Sasha
Snow
Running time: 87 minutes Playing at: Cinéma du Parc
A man swims across a river, chainsaw in hand, and fells a 300-yearold tree on protected aboriginal land. If he did it for the greater good, would we be able to hear the message?
That’s one of the implied questions in British director Sasha Snow’s alternately evocative and melodramatic docudrama Hadwin’s Judgement. The NFB-coproduced account of the outrageous, confusing but ultimately powerful final statement of B.C. logger-turned-activist Grant Hadwin probes the contradictions surrounding the above-noted controversial act, which took place on Jan. 20, 1997.
That date is never mentioned in Snow’s self-consciously timeless film, which begins and ends with the recitation of an aboriginal legend about a man too strong to die, who emerges from the sea as an outcast from society.
Hadwin fits the description. A Paul Bunyan-type character, larger than life, the superhuman B.C. native started off working for the logging companies.
He would bound through virgin rainforests, picking and marking the most valuable trees and charting paths for roads to be built so that logging companies could get the most bang for their buck.
He was paid handsomely for his
work, and he was darn good at it; but ultimately, the weight of Hadwin’s actions took its toll on his conscience.
He had an epiphany in which he saw the evil of the entire enterprise, and thus began a steady spiral into the abyss of madness — or the crystal clarity of enlightenment, depending how you look at it.
He began writing long, detailed letters to anyone who would listen, and even those who wouldn’t, explaining the error of humanity’s ways.
The tricky part here is how to retell this fascinating story. Snow interviews people close to Hadwin, relying heavily on forest ecologist Herb Hammond and especially John Vaillant, author of the 2005 book The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed, winner of the Governor General’s Award for non-fiction.
But with a lack of visuals of his subject, Snow opts for dramatic recreation — with Hadwin played by actor Douglas Chapman — which has its good and bad sides.
It helps us picture how things may have happened but it lends a certain theatricality to the proceedings that doesn’t always work.
The music, too, is hit-and-miss, flipping between nuanced and overpowering (the celestial choirs in the film’s final act are a tad over the top).
Helping his cause greatly, however, is the stunning cinematography, which captures the majesty of this increasingly ravaged environment.
Combined with the story itself, offset by insightful interviews with indigenous tribe members, it paints an intriguing portrait of a tormented man’s desperate wakeup call.