Crude
Dir: Joe Berlinger
Rating: 3.5/5.0
First Run Features
105 Minutes
A few years ago, I received a book that ranked all the oil companies from best to worst based on environmental track record. While I was aware that Exxon/Mobil is a pretty horrible company, the book also urged me to stop buying gas from Chevron and Texaco. After watching Joe Berlinger’s salient documentary Crude, which follows a lawsuit brought by the indigenous people of Ecuador against Chevron, I am glad I stopped giving them my money.
Though one-sided and all too happy to assail an easy target such as a monstrous oil company, Crude backs up its rhetoric by providing footage and images of the people and terrain affected by Chevron’s (which acquired Texaco) negligence and greed. Berlinger’s protagonists make it clear that the Ecuadorean Amazon was once an Eden filled with clean water, abundant wildlife and a thriving indigenous culture. But images of toxic water, pits filled with sludge, dying animals and people riddled with skin diseases and cancer make it clear that something is amiss in this once idyllic forest.
Berlinger, a capable director of documentaries such as Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, swiftly traces the history of Chevron/Texaco’s drilling operations in Ecuador while following the drama of an on-going grassroots lawsuit against the oil giant. While the film does center around Ecuadorean lawyer Pablo Fajardo and his American counterpart Steven Donziger, Berlinger is more interested in exposing corporate greed via a colonialist screed of avaricious disregard for the people of Ecuador’s Amazon. It is also a treatise on the labyrinthine hallways of a shaky multinational legal system. With over 30,000 plaintiffs and evidence from an independent laboratory confirming Chevron’s misdeeds, the corporation’s lawyers still find ways to stall, block and, eventually, disregard justice.
Berlinger wisely gives camera time to the lawyers and scientists from Chevron, a move that prevents the film from becoming a public service announcement and more a well-rounded piece of journalistic filmmaking. But as Chevron tries to pass the blame onto an Ecuadorean company that took over the oil pits, the corporation’s hypocrisy and ugly nose for profiteering becomes more and more apparent. It is impossible to pit polished denials against footage of children dying from cancer and expect the suits to walk off with the victory.
It is important to realize, however, the people behind this grassroots movement are not just some hapless tribe from the jungle. Berlinger makes it clear that the American lawyers helping can sniff a profit from the other side of the Equator and aren’t helping out for shits and giggles. The gravity of the case and its ability to tug on heartstrings isn’t lost on these lawyers and Berlinger chronicles how political rallies, stories published in Vanity Fair and the role an endorsement by Sting and Trudie Styler elevated this story to public consciousness. It is manipulation of another type and whether it’s monetary or public opinion gain, these rich folks aren’t helping only out of kindness.
At its heart, Crude is a morality tale of David vs. Goliath, as the plaintiffs like to point out throughout the film. It’s a sobering story of greedy destruction and the persistence of humans and humanitarian groups to keep fighting the tentacles of multinational corporations. Unfortunately, one has to be pushed to point of annihilation before the world really takes notice.
by David Harris
