(Canada/USA, 89 min.)
Dir. Avi Lewis
Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere)
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| Photo courtesy of TIFF. |
“I’ve always kind of hated films about climate change,” says
Naomi Klein as she introduces the eco-doc This
Changes Everything. Klein drolly gives her condolences to the polar bears
that often inspire sympathy in fire-and-brimstone climate chance documentaries
that primarily deliver their messages through fear. As someone who watched over
one hundred environmental documentaries this summer for a film festival, I
appreciate Klein’s sentiment. Her rebuttal is even better.
Climate change docs generally perpetuate a conversation of fear, like visual essays on a ticking doomsday clock that’s about to strike if the world doesn’t go green. Alternatively, they’re PowerPoint presentations, like facts, figures, and linear graphs coupled with rising platforms to make an argument. These stories have been done before and, to be honest, they generally aren’t done well. While climate change documentaries continually prompt reactions from audiences, they don’t inspire change. On the other hand, this compelling, invigorating, and cinematically engaging film is exactly what the green movement needs: regardless of whether one usually likes or loathes eco docs, This Changes Everything is essential viewing.
Lewis smartly keeps Klein a peripheral figure in the story,
as her persona never overwhelms the film with her celebrity or screen presence.
The public intellectual appears mostly as an observer or listener (if she
appears at all) and she large acts as the audience’s eye to an awakening story.
Klein is mostly present in voiceover, which compellingly conveys the argument
in tandem with the subjects on screen. This
Changes Everything favours dialogue, rather than didacticism, which alone
sets it apart from its contemporaries.
This Changes
Everything, inspired by Klein’s book of the same name but developed as a
film concurrently, marks another strong collaboration between Klein and her
partner director Avi Lewis. This Changes
Everything runs with Klein’s radical thesis that builds upon the concept of
master narratives and breaks them down to look at the world anew. The problem
isn’t just the way previous eco docs tell stories, Klein says, the problem is the
stories they tell. In the capitalist society that produces narratives for
consumers, global warming often finds itself framed within a larger story that
says the world is a machine that humans can regulate and control to create a
more productive society. The natural, organic planet Earth, however, is not a
man-made entity of which humans are the masters.
The film follows Klein around the globe as she visits
individuals for whom the story of the world as a well-oiled machine doesn’t
bring a happy narrative. By looking at key failings in which the story doesn’t
pan out, This Changes Everything radically
encourages audiences to change the conversation. Change the story, though, and
one changes the potential for tangible results.
The film visits individuals like Crystal, an Indigenous woman
who lives near the Alberta Tar Sands and sees her tribal land quarantined under
government order. Her ordeal is a familiar one as Alberta oil predominates
Canadian documentaries now that the Harper government has scarred the face of
Canada. (See: Oil Sands Karaoke.) As Klein
listens to Crystal’s ordeal and as Lewis’s camera follows them to the site as
Crystal tries to check up on territory that she has a right to access, the film
encounters gross bureaucratic tangles, condescension from chauvinist workers,
and drunken tomfoolery from cash-seeking workers that fuel the demand for cheap
oil that devastates the Earth. These scenes also reveal the problem with the
prevailing story, which says the Earth is ripe for plucking: Crystal’s heritage
follows a narrative that teaches people to respect the land, and the areas
cordoned off by Big Oil are nothing but short-term gain.
This Changes
Everything takes a pragmatic philosophy with the Tar Sands, though, and
recognizes that the global system is too complex and entrenched in cheap
ephemeral oil simply to flick the switch. People need a broader, deeper change
so that history doesn’t repeat itself. Hence, the story.
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| Photo courtesy of TIFF. |
It’s the same story that Klein sees everywhere, as Crystal’s
contaminated and quarantined land mirrors the fate of a goat ranch owned by
Mike and Alexis in Montana. Fuel extraction by neighbouring interests
disastrously disrupts their plans. Similarly, a village in Greece rallies
against a Canadian gold mine, Eldorado, which draws precious metals for foreign
interests at the expense of local nature and culture. “Please tell the
Canadians to pack up and leave,” says the Greek chorus as This Changes Everything captures a chord of unrest that
reverberates both locally and globally.
Rather than simply rely on the emotional immediacy of these
scenes to provoke a sentimental response in audiences, This Changes Everything looks not at the problems but at the
solutions to make a strong intellectual argument for how such cases could be
the answer to saving the planet. Klein connects the evidence from these
situations and identifies “tipping points” that inspire change. Mike and
Alexis, for example, respond not with pitchforks, but with solar panels, as
they invest in alternative energy to defy the fossil fuel companies that
annihilated. The film returns to Fort McMurray where and speaks directly to
Canadian viewers—potential future members of “sacrifice zones” like the Tar
Sands—and challenges them to share the new story.
This Changes
Everything situates the tipping points within a larger global movement and
argues that the fight for climate change is but one facet of a larger fight
happening worldwide. The film harnesses the power and spirit of the Occupy
Movement as citizens around the world wake up to the ills of capitalist machinery
and say that enough is enough. The fluid editing by Nick Hector skilfully
unites the individual stories into a collective one to convey shrewdly the
power of a united front.
The film has a good sense of humour, though, as Lewis and
Klein show the other side of the argument, albeit from a left angle. “If you
want more trees, use more wood,” says a bigwig at the American Heartland
conference where the myth of global warming is thoroughly “debunked.” Things
are drolly green from the perspective of the Benjamins, and the film barely
needs a rebuttal to convey the fallacy of the counterargument. It’s a joke.
“If climate change is taken seriously, it changes
everything,” Klein argues succinctly. The juxtapositions between the stories of
those profiting from the environment and of those burdening the cost parallels
the fight between the one percent and the ninety-nine. This Changes Everything implicitly uses the failings of one
ideological movement to bolster another. Work together and find a tangible action
plan, the film encourages viewers as it leaves them inspired by the
possibilities with the environmental crises. This Changes Everything is both a great film and a rallying
cry for change.
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
This Changes Everything opens in Ottawa at The Mayfair on Oct. 9.
Please note that
there is a special preview on Sunday, Oct. 4 at 6:30 PM with Avi Lewis and
Naomi Klein in attendance.
Readers inspired by This Changes
Everything may seek more information through The Leap Manifesto
and learn how they can help change the story.
Please visit www.tiff.net for more
information on this year’s festival.
More coverage on this year’s festival can be found here.
