Review by Mike Martin
Featuring Andrew Nikiforuk, Lester Brown, Mike Hudema,
John Soykut, Holly Fortier, Wilfred Grandjambe, Margaret McDonald | Narrated by Neve Campbell
UK certification E | UK RRP £14.99 | Runtime 73 minutes | Written & directed by Leslie Iwerks
Oh gawd, not another worthy documentary about pollution, greenhouses gases and global warming I hear you cry. Hold on, though. Before your eyes glaze over, you should know that this is one of the better pieces of filmmaking you are likely to see this year. It’s shocking, passionate, beautifully shot and tells a great story – and all in 73 minutes. It’s more visual than An Inconvenient Truth, shorter than The 11th Hour, and there’s no Michael Moore in sight.
Its central idea is the little-known fact that the country which now provides the US with the majority of its oil is not in the Middle East or Venezuela – it is, in fact, Canada. The oil comes from an area the size of Florida, and it’s virtually on the surface, mixed with sand. Huge multinational companies are ruthlessly stripping the land, with disastrous consequences for the environment, with toxins being released into the river and gases into the air. The footage of the land from the air is truly harrowing – green wetland is being turned into what looks like the surface of the moon.
So far so rabble-rousing, but director Iwerks is bright enough to provide balance, in the form of Mel Knight, the minister for Energy, and Greg Stringham of the Canadian Association of Oil. Her camera simply lets these two bumbling, incoherent, uninformed suits condemn themselves out of their own mouths – there is no trick cutting or set-up involved. Iwerks also knows that to keep bombarding the audience with stats would become numbing, so she introduces an amazing character halfway through – Doctor John O’Connor, from the tiny town of Fort Chipewyan, down-river from the main strip-mine. Alarmed to discover a huge rise in rare cancers in the local population, he makes his findings public and suddenly faces massive government machinery hounding him and his family. He is the real hero here, a simple man who decides to face up to massive bureaucracy and, as one character says, ‘bullying’.
Iwerks’ skill is to finish her film with a positive message, in the form of President Barack Obama, the living embodiment of hope. Wind and solar power is the answer, says the argument, so get involved, and we can all make a difference. It’s a textbook piece of filmmaking and if it changes people’s views then it’s done its job. The director is the granddaughter of the co-creator of Mickey Mouse, and with cinema DNA like that it’s no wonder she knows her way around an editing suite. Good on her, she’s clearly putting her talents to good use. Powerful stuff.
EXTRAS ★ The short film Downstream, and the theatrical trailer.