In “ALICE: At Home with Alice Parker”, a documentary film by Montes-Bradley, the audience joins the filmmaker Montes-Bradley as he breaks the Fourth Wall leading into Alice’s kitchen, in her 17th-century cottage, once the town meeting hall in Hawley, a small village in the western mountains Massachusetts. And what the camera is about to reveal are previously unknown aspects of Alice’s relationships and collaborations with other American Artists resulting in a magnificent body of work with profound lyricism and devotion for the land, and humankind.
One such collaboration evoked in the film is the one Alice reflects upon when thinking of Emily Dickinson. “Emily's and my situation are very similar in some ways and very different in others. We certainly were shaped by this climate.” Alice assures us, “We were shaped by this rogued countryside. The granite and the hills.” The intimacy of the dialogue between protagonist and filmmaker renders “ALICE” as a unique window into a vanishing universe with persistent truths and values.
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