The joy and pain of devoting your life to the king of all textiles is explored in Noah Collier and M. Emily Mackenzie’s “Carpet Cowboys,” a documentary that features charming subjects with a passion for carpeting. The film isn’t a history lesson on all things carpet, but more of a human interest piece that reveals the down-home people behind this segment of the flooring industry.
We’ve all walked on them, be it in hotel hallways, convention centers, or casinos, and they mostly go without being noticed. The majority of people don’t even look down or give carpets a second thought. But what about the folks who have chosen to make their careers in the carpeting industry? Mackenzie and Collier travel to Dalton Georgia, coined the “Carpet Capital of the World,” to interview a set of locals who develop and create the majority of America’s carpets.
The film starts out with an interesting look at the various processes that must occur before carpet can be designed, tested, and then sold. It starts with finding inspiration for new rug patterns in the simplest of places (in this case, around the farm) and reveals just how much goes into the art of creating textiles. It’s interesting to get an insider’s view of the testing processes, which are far from high tech. Whether it’s using real human bodily fluids to check for stain resistance or getting in those extra steps by walking around in circles for hours to assess the wear and tear, there’s a surprising amount of plain and simple elbow grease that goes into manufactured carpeting.
By interviewing various subjects who live and breathe carpet, Collier and Mackenzie capture a real slice of Americana. These professionals seem to love what they do but at the same time, they all wish they could be someone else.
Most of the film’s subjects aren’t shy to express their desire to leave the carpet industry. From feeling the duty to take over the family business to leaving it all and going into stone instead, there always seems to be something else beyond the horizon. While a lot of these smaller stories are perhaps more interesting, the directors choose to focus on the Scottish expat turned cowboy Roderick James.
You can see why the directors picked Roderick, with his charming brogue and wild dreams of leaving the country life behind. He’s tired of living on his ranch and instead longs to become a musician, start his own fashion line, and open a bar in the Philippines. You have to dream big, as they say.
It’s a human interest piece with varying degrees of success, and Roderick’s aspirations aren’t that relatable. He’s clearly the standout among the film’s subjects in terms of an oversized personality, but he isn’t the most interesting aspect of the documentary. The more the film focuses on Roderick, the faster it spirals downward.
“Carpet Cowboys” is at its most interesting early on, when it takes a look at the folks who make the carpeting industry tick. We may all wish the best for Roderick, but his version of the American Dream isn’t one that makes a story so compelling that it can carry a feature documentary.
By: Louisa Moore
Screen Zealots 