Review: Freeland Slides into Fatalism but Is Anchored by a Rich Central Performance

At their best, writer-directors Mario Furloni and Kate McLean evince a masterful grasp of storytelling that’s subtle and rich in innuendo.

Freeland
Photo: Dark Star Pictures

Mario Furloni and Kate McLean’s Freeland opens on a farm in Humboldt County, California. The land is lush and green, surrounded by towering mountains and redwoods that seem to offer refuge from the noise of the modern world. A single shot majestically establishes the setting’s entire geography, in fact, capturing the appealingly ramshackle farmhouse and the surrounding trailers and greenhouses. We appear to be traveling back in time to a commune, an association that’s intensified by a credits sequence featuring scratchy footage of young men and women in the 1960s, living off the land and presumably resisting the advances of contemporary mainstream culture.

Such idyllic, nostalgic imagery is, of course, setting us up for the kill. This farm is run by Devi (Krisha Fairchild), an aging boomer with a lucrative illegal marijuana business. Furloni and McLean, who also wrote the film’s script, spend quite a bit of time acclimating the audience to the rhythms of harvesting weed, and to the subtle, hypnotic calm of watching and tending to the plants beforehand. The tranquil vibe of the work contrasts compellingly with Devi herself, who pointedly, refreshingly isn’t painted as a sentimental fuddy-duddy hippie.

Devi is generous, yet she holds herself at a distance from her three twentysomething employees: Casey (Casey James Matthews), Mara (Lily Gladstone), and Josh (Frank Mosley). The former, who gives Freeland an eerie hum of tension, jarringly offers to become partners with Devi even though she’s run the business for decades, owns the property, and appears to hold all the cards. It also seems as if he resents Devi, wants to sleep with her, or both. There’s a whiff of King Lear in this setup, as the film similarly pivots on an elder leader attempting to hold an empire together amid the conflicts arising from the movements of underlings.

Advertisement

Furloni and McLean allow these relationships to develop naturally, evincing a masterful grasp of storytelling that’s subtle and rich in innuendo. It’s clear early on that Devi’s self-contained paradise is going to be imperiled somehow, and that she doesn’t have the control over her employees that she thinks she does, which the viewer feels in the silences between characters’ speeches and especially in Devi’s tightly coiled physicality.

YouTube video

Bringing matters to a boil is the county government’s decision to crack down on Devi for not having a permit to farm and distribute weed. This attention alienates Devi from her clients, forcing her to spend money that she barely has for approvals that she might not even receive. Freeland then becomes a kind of thriller, in which Devi attempts to find a new way to distribute her new strain, which she believes to be her best. In a warm, poignant scene with an old friend, Ray (John Craven), she names the new strain “God’s Pussy.”

Freeland, so diaphanous and suggestive in its opening stretches, with its sharp performances and Furloni’s free-floating, delicately lit cinematography, becomes more programmatic once Devi starts fighting for her livelihood. The film’s dominant theme soon becomes apparent in all caps: that the legalization and industrialization of weed is another way for the government, and rich capitalists, to stomp out idealistic, small-time entrepreneurs. But such hopelessness doesn’t feel earned. Given the high taxes on legal weed, it’s hard, nearly impossible, to believe that the black market could be so efficiently eliminated. It’s nearly as difficult to believe that a 30-year veteran of marijuana farming could lose all of her distribution resources overnight.

Advertisement

There’s a faint libertarian vibe to Freeland that the filmmakers could’ve utilized for satire. While she holds out, Devi loses colleagues who decide to pay the fines and play by the new government rules. They deem her selfish, which is ironic given that Devi was once, presumably, a hippie who preached of sharing and freedom from the Man. And given that Devi treats her employees as underlings rather than as equals, as she would her contemporaries, this criticism doesn’t feel entirely unreasonable. Devi has sold out to a certain extent, while simultaneously falling behind the times, rendering herself vulnerable in the process.

This possibility, of hippies growing hypocritically complacent, was parodied in Flashback, Franco Amurri’s good-natured and largely forgotten Easy Rider riff. Without a jolt of comedy, or any other tonality to offset the overriding fatalism of its second half, Freeland grows self-pitying. It’s held together, however, by Fairchild’s rich and thorny performance, as she renders Devi steely, clever, manic, and intensely, unforgettably lonely. Hers is a portrait of a woman who comes to suddenly accept that she’s to eventually go, perhaps not so gently, into the night.

Score: 
 Cast: Krisha Fairchild, Frank Mosley, Lily Gladstone, Casey James Matthews, John Craven  Director: Mario Furloni, Kate McLean  Screenwriter: Mario Furloni, Kate McLean  Distributor: Dark Star Pictures

Chuck Bowen

Chuck Bowen's writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, The AV Club, Style Weekly, and other publications.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.