I guess we’ll just have to disagree there. October Country is hardly bereft of emotion, but it does have a distanced quality. However, I think that quality is what makes the film so successful. Where you saw a singularity of tone and an absence of revelation, I saw unexpected thematic depth. The film’s blatant fascination with locality and texture–consistent with Mosher’s photographic work–as well as its consistent evocation of history transforms what could have been a “mere” personalized document of Mosher’s family and their troubles into something more academic, but also much more daring and enduring, in my opinion.