‘Richland’ Review: A Sobering View of a Town Taken Advantage Of
thewrap.comTribeca Film Festival, we are introduced to a mindset of pride, shame and unrelenting identity that comes at a cost. “Richland” is a unique and heart-wrenching portrait of a town willingly taken advantage of and is a necessary documentary in an age of nuclear unease.The film tells the true story of its namesake town, a small Washington state suburb positioned right next to the Hanford Nuclear Site.
It was active back in the 1940s when Richland was a working town producing weapons-grade plutonium—the very ammunition that was responsible for the atomic bomb devastation on Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The residents of Richland don’t see this as an indictment, though. They see what they produced all those years ago as an “accomplishment.”Right off the bat, “Richland” sets up a rather interesting situation that is not so much a story as it is a life.
The life of a place and of a people, all of which are intrinsically tied to a legacy of pain, terror and unmitigated death. It’s a complicated life at that, entrenched in a situation that is far from black and white.
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