résumé
"Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking." These words, attributed to the Oglala Sioux medicine man Black Elk, are the final bit of text to appear in veteran filmmaker James Benning's FOUR CORNERS which uses a specific geographic location to pose larger questions about the United States. Here, the geographic and wholly imaginary place Four Corners, that favorite tourist destination where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet, becomes a kind of theoretical ground zero, the site from which Benning can give voice to other, pointedly unofficial sort of spurious conspiracy (the history of the United States), but one in which each sound and each image hints at a story not yet fully told (the histories of the United States.)." - Manohla Dargis, LA Weekly