Locally based husband-and-wife filmmakers Jeanne Jordan and Steve Ascher must have known that the American farm crisis was already old news in 1991. Stories of proud families surrendering their way of life under the combined assault of nature, bank foreclosures, and Reagan's economic policies were a media staple throughout the '80s. But that didn't stop Jordan and Ascher from taking their camera out to Iowa in the summer of 1991 to document the drama surrounding yet another struggle to preserve a family farm. Only this time it was Jeanne Jordan's clan who were fighting to hold onto a plot of land that had been theirs for 125 years.

Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern -- whose title references a twisting stream that flows through the Jordan property -- doesn't waste much time examining the larger issue of who's to blame for the state of American agriculture. It documents, on a deep and disarmingly personal level, how one family found its way through a financial crisis. Jordan's narration, simple as it is, takes on a hypnotic quality as she recalls growing up as the youngest of six siblings, rarely, if ever, spending a moment alone with her stern, stoic father, Russ. Ascher pokes his camera into the living room, where Russ and his wife, Mary Jane, spend evenings watching the good guys win in television Westerns; the kitchen, where Russ and his sons hatch a plan to pay off $220,000; and a hospital room, where the 70-year-old Russ receives treatment for Parkinson's disease. Then he pulls the camera back, so you can appreciate how exotic and isolated the Jordan's way of life has become. Alternately heartwarming and heart-wrenching, rich with understated humor and warmth, punctuated with priceless glimpses inside the human condition, Troublesome Creek is a powerful film despite its familiar theme. At the Brattle.