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| Images courtesy of NEON |
In 2021, Swedish author and lecturer/Marxist Andreas Malm
published his still controversial nonfiction book How to Blow Up a Pipeline. A thesis on climate change and the notion
that sabotage and property damage are a logical response to the looming threats
of climate change, so to speak. A
Marxist text praised and lambasted in equal measure across the board, designed
to lament the lack of climate activism in general and something of a call to
violence less interested in how than why, the book invariably engendered opposition
as well as generated group factions of climate change protestors of their own. Whatever the case, the incendiary plea for
readers to consider sabotage ruffled more than a few feathers throughout the
literary community and particularly within political news junkets.
Just a year later American writer-director Daniel Goldhaber
fresh off of his debut 2018 horror film Cam decided to somehow or
another turn the nonfiction text into a kind of The Wages of Fear or Sorcerer
kind of fictional thriller involving a group of climate change activists
led by Xochitl (Ariela Barer) and her friend Theo (Sasha Lane) who decide to
capitalize literally on the book and film’s title How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Told largely in the present with some key
flashbacks filling in the backstories of the characters, we meet blue collar
worker Dwayne (Jake Weary) whose land is being encroached upon by oil refineries,
neurotic Native American explosives expert Michael (Forrest Goodluck), Theo’s
skeptical and apprehensive girlfriend Alisha (Jayme Lawson) and young lifers
Rowan (Kristine Froseth) and Logan (Lukas Gage).
Casting aside the film’s political leanings which will
probably divide viewership on its call to arms, How to Blow Up a Pipeline as
a two hour narrative piece is a generally taut and tense action thriller
concerning a group of young people working in a state of emergency to complete
a crime that will likely cause the group more harm to themselves than anything
else. While neither the book nor the
film quite spell out the details of how exactly to carry out such an act of
sabotage, the film nonjudgmentally mires us in their predicament and the
tension aided by a pulsating electronic score by Gavin Brivik helps to amplify
the film’s sense of wading in uncharted waters.
No one in this scenario really truly knows the extent of what they’re
getting themselves into but the film does ensure you know at least the personal
reasons behind the individuals making up this ragtag group of
eco-terrorists.
Shot on 16mm by Tehillah De Castro, How to Blow Up a
Pipeline looks gritty and the vistas of New Mexico desert lands covered by
oil refineries radiate with heavy grain levels that make us feel the dry heat
of the terrain. Filmed within twenty-two
days, there’s a breakneck urgency to the film’s energy and the generous
participation of an anonymous government contractor dealing in counterterrorism
helped assist in the construction of the bomb-making scenes. The ensemble cast across the board while
mostly improvising their dialogue realistically create a unique group of people
who all come to the podium with their own deep-seated reasons for coming on
board the climate activist sabotaging.
Special attention goes to Ariela Barer as the lead activist bringing the
group together and Forrest Goodluck as the borderline sociopathic Michael. Also strong is Jake Weary whose blue-collar
worker participating in the sabotage comes across as a Marvin Heemeyer type.
Inevitably, the release of this film was going to be a
problem with people on opposite sides of the political fence further arguing in
the press over the film’s merits and potential for inciting copycat
crimes. It didn’t help that the film’s
website included a detailed map of pipeline locations in the US and
Canada. Upon release, twenty-three
federal and state bodies issued roughly thirty-five warnings. Naturally, the FBI closed in on the film over
concerns that it might inspire terrorist attacks not just on critical
infrastructure but on foreign targets as well.
Moreover, the film was mostly buried in theaters relegated to only a few
independent arthouses and garnering only a paltry $1 million in box office
returns.
While the film’s politics and calls to violence are indeed a
red button that will anger many into not seeing the film at all, How to Blow
Up a Pipeline as a movie mostly functions as a Friedkin-esque pressure
cooker ala Sorcerer involving a group of disparate figures from
different walks of life coming together over a singular near-suicidal mission
for good or for ill. Primarily concerned
with people moved by their situations or demeanors towards coordinated sabotage,
the book and film aim to engender a call to arms but on the film’s terms it
mainly lets us in the shoes of these characters for a couple of hours before
our lives return to normal. As a political
plea for change and preserving the environment, How to Blow Up a Pipeline has
ample reason to cause worry among authorities and not everyone will embrace its
message so openly. As a genre thriller
aimed at giving viewers an urgent exercise in white knuckled tension, it’ll
definitely get your attention.
--Andrew Kotwicki
