Julie McLaughlin
Disaster doc film fest proves that the end is nigh indeed
In the first reel of Danny Boyle’s post apocalyptic masterpiece 28 Days Later our hero wanders into a zombie-infested church to find the words “the end is extremely fucking nigh” scrawled on the wall.
It’s a terrifying moment. Most of us rely on the comfort of knowing that every day is going to be just like the one before and even more of us never think of the possibility that our world will one day come to an end. As scary as that zombie flick is though it’s nothing compared to the terror that comes while watching the latest batch of disaster documentaries that have been coming out in the last few years. Let’s face it movie monsters will scare you for a second but when social economic and environmental collapse get followed up with a swift one-two punch from mother nature your heart stops beating.
At first glance A Crude Awakening (2006) is a stern finger-wag at our global dependency on oil as an energy source a commodity and a source of employment. However as directors Basil Gelpke Ray McCormack and Reto Caduff drill deeper into the story with the help of pundits economists and politicians it becomes clear that things are much worse than the film’s title suggests. The globe is littered with former oil hotspots that have turned into environmental disaster areas complete with abandoned oil derricks and shattered local economies. Even more distressing especially for a petroleum-fuelled economy such as ours — we’re running out. That car you love so much won’t be going too far when our oil reserves tank and that Alberta advantage you have tucked in your back pocket won’t mean a thing. The film easily makes its point by asking why despite the resources needed to extract oil from the ground gas still costs less per litre than filtered water. Suck on that one for a while.
And while you do check out Who Killed the Electric Car (2006). It makes a great companion piece by showing how greedy car manufacturers are complicit in perpetuating our petroleum dependency by abolishing electric cars from the market despite their environmentally effective nature.
The brave-hearted (and old) among you are probably thinking “What do I care about oil running out? I’ll be dead long before that happens.” That may be true but will you go by natural causes or will you be wiped out in a natural disaster that has been spurred on by global warming?
While you’re weighing that option throw The 11th Hour (2007) into your DVD player. Narrator Leonardo DiCaprio lays it all out for you: ever since the industrial revolution showed us a new and more efficient way to rape the planet human beings have being doing just that. With the single-minded nature of a slasher-movie killer we have revelled in our position at the top of the food chain without any thought to the plant and animal species we have brought to extinction or how our ever-growing environmental footprint is bringing about catastrophic climate change. The polar ice caps are melting and water levels are rising like some unstoppable 1950s B-movie creature. Hurricanes tsunamis and other devastating weather systems are becoming more and more common. The grand irony of all this is the fact that since human beings caused this mess they’re the only ones that can clean it up.
An Inconvenient Truth (2006) shares a similar viewpoint. In what’s little more than a PowerPoint presentation from former U.S. vice-president Al Gore the jaw-dropping impact humans have had on the planet is laid out in easy-to-read graphs and charts. Despite its rather academic approach this film too uses horror movie tactics.
You know that scene at the end of a slasher flick where the killer is dead and you think everyone is safe and then he pops up one last time to kill someone else? Gore goes one better. His research shows that while dire the situation is not irreversible and as the closing credits roll they are peppered with simple everyday things that you and I can do to help save the planet. But here’s the sucker punch — most folks who care enough about the planet to see the movie in the first place are probably already installing low-flush toilets composting and recycling. Tree-huggers like myself are left with the terrifying truth that to save this planet we have to convince all the SUV-driving landfill-clogging water-wasting oil-addicted chuckleheads who don’t give a shit about anybody but themselves to change their ways. Good luck.
There’s just nothing more frightening than that.
