Crude: The Real Price of Oil
Rated: NOT RATED
WorkNameSort: Crude: The Real Price of Oil
Our Rating: 3.00
OLA Fest 2010
Wednesday-Sunday,
Feb. 10-14
Various locations
www.awakeningartculture.org
Free-$5 per film;
$30 festival pass
Director Joe Berlinger (Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) has made a documentary about the deadly practices of Chevron-Texaco oil in the Amazon that has all the ingredients of a stirring environmental drama: a David-versus-Goliath story, heartbreaking images of oil spills and cancer-stricken children, a fine villain in corporate lawyers, even the musician Sting. So why does it feel so tedious?
Part of the reason is the evildoer itself. When a couple of Ecuadorian human-rights lawyers take up the case of the native Amazonians who are dying from bathing in oil-polluted waters after decades of drainage from Texaco-then-Chevron factories there, the oil giants engage in long-form warfare, dragging out the legal process for years on end and burying it in a rain forest’s worth of documents.
Finally nearing the homestretch of the case with a fascinating trial held in the Amazon itself ‘ watching the oil lawyers plead their case to the tribal jury while soaked through with sweat is a real treat ‘ Berlinger begins his narrative. But this thing is more complicated than any one film can handle, and Crude quickly gets bogged down in procedural madness that goes beyond the engrossing and toward the tedious. Imagine how the judge must feel.
There are moments of Crude ‘ a highlight of this week’s annual OLA Fest ‘ that are unqualified delights: lawyers from both sides getting in each other’s faces; a Chevron man passive-aggressively agreeing on an end-all scientific expert, then suggesting that maybe the expert’s findings could be subject to review. (That last part elicits a shocked look from the plaintiffs that would be hilarious if the stakes weren’t life and death.) And Sting and his wife’s knightly appearance at just the right time is enough to quell some cynicism.
But ultimately this case is not even near an end, and that realization is just as devastating to the viewer as it is to those involved. (Crude screens 3:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 12, at Bush Auditorium at Rollins College, and 8:40 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 13, at Relax Grill in Lake Eola Park)
This article appears in Feb 10-16, 2010.