The story behind the world's largest oil-related environmental lawsuit comes to the screen as award-winning documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) investigates the facts in the case of the so-called "Amazon Chernobyl," a disaster that occurred deep in the rain forests of Ecuador. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
A gripping, multifaceted thriller about media politics, global economics, and legal infighting. Wherever your sympathies fall, this may teach you a lot about the way the modern world works.
What Crude does best is take us behind the scenes and show in often candid detail how campaigns are waged, tactics decided on and strategies prioritized.
As the film very eloquently implies, when the greater good is defined as profits, and a lack of culpability is proportionate to your number of shareholders, well . . . a lot of petroleum-soaked chickens will be coming home to roost.
In a welcome change from many recent documentaries with an activist bent, the director is never seen on camera, never heard on the soundtrack, and does precious little overt editorializing.
This intense documentary tells a hugely important story that's packed with compelling characters and situations. Although a repetitive structure and a sense of agonising futility conspire to undermine the vital lessons it has to teach us.
A bleak, necessarily incomplete tale, and suffers from a late intrusion by celebrity eco-botherer Trudi Styler. But with this gripping, angry film, Berlinger has put himself back on the side of the angels.
The Ecuadorians' fight continues, and their courage isn't to be doubted. Even the much-mocked, much-maligned campaigner Trudie Styler emerges with credit for supporting them.
Berlinger's purpose is not to cheerlead or show Fajardo rubbing shoulders with celebrity activists like Trudie Styler and Sting, but to highlight how easily money can tilt the scales of justice.
Few of these films ever take solid, substantive slices of truth or attestation from both sides. They are always partial, which vitiates the eagerness with which we would, if we could, espouse the cause of downtrodden.
Joe Berlinger's film is a suitably forensic dissection of an ecological disaster and much less of a crusading piece of polemic than documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth.
The arguments are batted back and forth, and one's sympathy for the Ecuadorean side takes only a slight wobble when Trudi Styler gets behind the cause.
A powerfully emotional documentary that grips like an expert legal thriller - by turns uplifting, suspenseful and utterly devastating, this is likely to be one of the best documentaries of the year.
"Crude" is a documentary about a class action suit brought by the indigenous populations of Ecuador against Chevron(who merged with Texaco and assumed their past liabilities including this one), seeking damages for the dumping of wastes which has destroyed waterways which are the lifeblood of the country. As a result,
many people are sick and dying from cancer and most cannot afford the treatments at far away hospitals. Chevron's response is that this is not their fault since according to them the damage was caused primarily by PetroEcuador after the refineries were nationalized in the 1990's.(They're next by the way.) Regardless, the damage has been done. For the first time, the indigenous peoples have a voice, through their lawyers, Pablo Fajardo and Steven Donziger, who the documentary follows around for a period of two years as the lawsuit heats up and turns into a major public relations battle.(At one point, a prominent human rights activist is reminded to stay on message.) Even as I am sure which side of the fight this effective documentary is on, it also seems it might be a part of this same public relations campaign.
January 28, 2011
Walter M.
Super Reviewer
My personal favorite straight documentary for several reasons; its subject and the filmmakers passion and levelheadedness. While there is a clear narrative complete with clear villains and victims, the makers of this movie aren't beyond acknowledging the difficulty of the situation.
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