'Water and Fire' and the glory of the Ozarks; KCPT documentary sheds light, honor on colorful region

There have been few attempts to document on video the history and culture of the Ozarks, let alone one as rich and lush and passionate as "Water and Fire." The new film will make its debut at 7 p.m. Sunday (repeating at 9) on Channel 19. Anybody who knows a lick about narrator C.W. Gusewelle knows that the Ozarks are his adopted back yard, a 50,000-square-mile stomping ground and home-away-from-home for The Kansas City Star columnist. Watching "Water and Fire," you get the sense he could go on for hours about this region, extolling its virtues, telling the story of the land and its people. Alas, he has only 90 minutes here. For the most part he and his partners at KCPT - producers Randy Mason and Mike Murphy, chief photographer Dave Burkhardt and music composer Kriss Avery - use it wisely. Visually speaking, this is a much more ambitious project than "This Place Called Home," Gusewelle's last KCPT special. "Water and Fire" opens with a gallery of wondrous images, including one shot that flat-out dazzles: It starts on a winding road, it turns and lifts swiftly and unexpectedly into a gorgeous river valley. As for the script, Gusewelle had two years to work on it, and the effort comes through. His writing here is sparer and more pungent than his newspaper columns. Listening to it, I realized how often I'm willing to put up with crummy writing in a TV documentary, so long as there's something interesting to look at. Gusewelle and crew lavish both words and pictures on us. As a result, "Water and Fire" is one of those rare television shows that must be watched twice: once to be seen and again to be heard. That's not to say "Water and Fire" doesn't disappoint. It does, largely due to a sin of editing that occurs around the 20-minute mark. Yet even this organizational lapse is born out of good intentions: to share as much story about this underappreciated region as 90 minutes will allow. To his credit, Gusewelle does it without sacrificing the unhurried rhythms of Ozark life in his narration. The film begins with a meditation on the area's timeless qualities. Gusewelle traces this to the waters that lifted hills and bluffs gently from the riverbeds millions of years ago. The topography of the Ozarks is similar to that of the Scottish Highlands, he says, and at one point even calls them "the Ozark highlands." ("Water and Fire" features charming Celtic melodies by local singer Connie Dover, underscoring the region's pull to its many residents of Scots-Irish descent.) Gusewelle then tells of the waves of immigrants, starting with American Indians, who came to the region over the centuries and used its vast natural resources. The pressure on the area's forests and game reserves grew unrelenting by the early 1900s, and exhaustion set in. What took millenniums for nature to build up was gone "in the span of a human lifetime." At this point, "Water and Fire" makes a confusing transition. From an old photograph of a deer kill, we're taken rather suddenly to the scene of a latter-day Civil War re-enactment. Dover sings a haunting, yet strangely out-of-place dirge. The narrative lurches into reverse some 60 years, to the conflict between North and South - and then a minute or so later still further back, to the Louisiana Purchase. This is where Gusewelle has set aside part of the film to tell the stories of the area's nonwhite earlier dwellers: American Indians, who were later driven west into Indian Territory (later Oklahoma), and blacks, who thrived in the Ozarks during the Reconstruction period until a terrorist campaign of lynching and hatred sent them packing. We see the chilling visage of Frank Embree, taken minutes before he was lynched by a mob in Fayette, Mo., in 1899 (a photo featured in an exhibit at a New York gallery), as well as a view of Springfield's town square, where what Gusewelle calls "the most heinous lynching in the Ozarks" took place in 1906. But then, by way of telling us of the resort areas black Kansas Citians founded in the Ozarks in the 1930s (marking the return of African-Americans to the region), "Water and Fire" finds its way back to where it was when it interrupted itself. For all the spectacular scenery in this film, spanning the four seasons, Gusewelle never gets too far removed from the people who inhabit and frequent the Ozarks. He is enamored of an earlier visitor, W.A. Dorrance, who traveled extensively here 60 years ago and kept a journal, later published as Three Ozark Streams. Several passages from the book are read throughout "Water and Fire." We also meet some of those who live here, including Larry Curran, a lifelong resident and trapper who is determined to enjoy himself no matter how little money he makes; Wayne Holmes, a Shakespeare scholar and seasoned ruminator on Ozarks culture; and Mary Alice Emerson, who with her husband, Dwight, left Kansas City behind for what she calls "our pearl of great price" - a spring where they started a successful fish hatchery. Several local historians also are brought in to supply context. Gusewelle pays attention to the enduring rituals of the Ozarks, especially hunting, fishing and congregating. A recurring theme in "Water and Fire" is the extremely delicate pact between the region's resurgent ecology and the equally robust economy of tourism and recreation. That includes not only Branson but also the mall that has become Missouri's top attraction, the sprawling Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World in Springfield. Gusewelle is careful not to take sides here; he accepts that the region will need to rely on both kinds of green for its continued prosperity. What does stick in his craw are the hillbilly stereotypes popularized by cartoonist Al Capp in his strip "Li'l Abner." Though Gusewelle is not entirely proud of its past, there is no mistaking his appreciation for the people who call the Ozarks their home. "Water and Fire," then, is the kind of documentary television needs more of: not the assembly-line potboilers seen so often on cable but works of spirit and imagination and undisguised affection for their subjects. To reach Aaron Barnhart, phone (816) 234-4790 or visit the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com @ART CAPTION:"Men hauling their catch - food for an Ozark table" is an image from 1926 used in "Water and Fire." @ART CREDIT:State Historical Society of Missouri @ART CAPTION:A man from Hartville, Mo., playing guitar is one of the many still images used in "Water and Fire." @ART CREDIT:Whitley Archive @ART:Photos (2) >>>