“Pre-derailment, we were known for coal mining and rubber production, but the Fourth of July is probably our magnum opus because explosions are very American,” Tristan, a senior from East Palestine High School says in “The Bulldogs,” stating the facts with a mix of resignation and slight bemusement at how all of that is intertwined that suggests he’s not long to remain in the area himself much beyond graduation. The derailment he alludes to is the February 2023 train accident around the small Ohio town in which 1.1 millions pounds of vinyl chloride was destroyed immediately as part of an effort to reopen the railway as quickly as possible, a hasty decision that brought fireworks earlier than Independence Day when the disposal literally involved pyrotechnics – so much so that local pizzeria owner John Cozza remembers watching “John Wick” and finding that it wasn’t his sound system that suddenly became far more realistic – and the community itself was torn about the potential health risks it posed to the local water supply when it was decided upon so quickly.
Whether the local waterways were tainted or not remains an open question throughout Noah Dixon and Ori Segev’s charming chronicle of post-derailment life in East Palestine, but when neighbors are divided over safety concerns, something unquestionably insidious has seeped into the discourse. What most in town can seem to agree on is that the national media attention in the immediate aftermath of the derailment leaned into sensationalism, which “The Bulldogs,” which takes its title from the high school’s nickname, strenuously avoids when Dixon and Segev spend a year capturing how life simply goes on for those who didn’t see much of a choice to stay put or not when given the green light to return when the thought of upending their way of life was more upsetting than the evidence that poking a stick in some tributaries will lead to suspiciously oily bubbles rising to the surface.
Reminiscent of Bill and Turner Ross’ panoramic “45365,” charting the daily rituals in a small town on the other side of the state, the film can often seem as if it’s taking the town’s recent notoriety as an excuse to simply look a little deeper when the community is full of interesting characters. There are those who go about their daily business as if little has changed and whose work has its share of intrigue from Anthony, a taxidermist who also forages for mushrooms in his spare time, and Kay, the proud proprietor of Kay’s Kuttin Korral whose clientele filtering in and out of a barber’s chair keeps her finger on the pulse of the town as she runs her hands through their hair, and then there are those who have been gently affected by the recent disaster such as Barb, a senior citizen who leads a workout group for people of her age where it’s less important to build biceps than keep muscles for social activity and starts a podcast focused on people who are staying positive, and Keller, a high school junior who recently found himself moving from the snare drums to the cymbals in the marching band when the previous person in the position moved with her family as a result of the derailment. Ironically, it is Dr. Rick Tsai, a chiropractor with an ostentatious gold statue of a male with Herculean physique in front of his house, that actually shows how fragile the situation is when he treats patients’ back pain and feels his own has been broken with the pollution he sees just outside his house, ultimately leading him to run for U.S. Congress when Gov. Mike DeWine makes a show of drinking from the tap during his visit to the area and calls for then-President Biden to come to the town seem to fall on deaf ears.
Eventually, the presidential motorcade does come through a year after the derailment, with John noting that most of the protestors that have showed up with both “Let’s Go Brandon” flags on one side of the street and “Free Palestine” (the other one) on the other don’t actually seem to be from around town, and while the film refrains from any political framing, “The Bulldogs” does reflect the disconnect in this specific climate where the loudest voices have made any reasonable debate unsavory and pressing issues go unaddressed when adherence to a national party line prevents them from even being raised, let alone gain traction. (In a Republican stronghold, good luck to Dr. Tsai, who likely leans right on a number of issues, running on what’s essentially an environmental platform, even when his meetings are filled people with MAGA hats who have been directly affected.) The film proves to be an antidote to such tunnel vision when as much as it elides any partisan distinctions, it presents East Palestine as a place where people hold plenty of different attitudes about a variety of things and while the derailment has exposed fissures, the desire of those to stay may in some cases look like willful ignorance or a denial of reality, but usually comes across as an abiding belief in maintaining the community that’s been built up over time despite any differences. A buoyant, bubbly score from Adam Robl and Shawn Sutta, who previously collaborated with Dixon and Segev on their narrative feature “Poser,” and splendid cinematography, regally presenting its subjects in a home they show great pride in, seem befitting of a place where shuteye may be hard to come by with the anxiety in the air, but should never have been dismissed as being a sleepy little town in the first place.
“The Bulldogs” will screen again at Slamdance in Los Angeles on February 22nd at 7 pm at the Landmark Sunset 5.