(Documentary - Canada-U.S.) An Abramorama release of an Alfonso Cuaron presentation of a Klein Lewis, Louverture Films production, in association with Dillywood Bertha Foundation, Jaya Media Fund. (Also in Vancouver film festival.) Running time: 89 MIN. Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (TIFF Docs), Sept. To back up Klein’s contentions, “This Changes Everything” zigzags around the world, starting with Fort McMurray in Alberta, where migrant workers are enjoying inflated salaries too much to dwell on the possible environmental threat posed by oil sands mining, and continuing on an itinerary that includes the Halkidiki region of Greece, where locals are revolting against government officials who are using the country’s economic crisis as an excuse to greenlight a gold-processing complex, and Andhra Pradesh, India, where activists struggle to preserve wetlands that may be despoiled by a proposed coal-fired power plant. From that idea, Klein claims, it’s a not-terribly-difficult leap for rapacious capitalists to view any exploitation of nature to be permissible as long as it is profitable - and if that harms the environment and/or other human beings, well, chalk that up to unavoidable collateral damage. Klein provocatively provides her take on historical context, tracing many of today’s woes back to the Enlightenment notion that nature is a beast to be tamed, by any means necessary, and then forced to fulfill human needs. And even though it takes a while, as Lewis and Klein dutifully and more often than not compellingly catalogue assorted worst-case scenarios involving the greedy ravaging of Mother Earth, the filmmakers wind up offering hope by indicating the power of game-changing grassroots activism and enlightened government action. This prologue raises hopes that “This Changes Everything” really will be a different sort of documentary on the subject.
0 kommentar(er)
