I get the feeling that, considering the subject matter of this review and… well, just take a look at the title for the bloody thing, I should probably try and cover my own arse by writing a notice saying, as explicitly as possible, that I do not condone the actions that are depicted in this film and I do not encourage anyone to re-enact them in real life. Y’know, just in case someone gets pissed off enough about what I think of a certain movie to go digging for dirt on me, and decides to quote-mine for anything that they consider wrongthink.
Of course, despite what most media would tell you about pacifists, I am not a coward. As much as my opinions and worldviews are subject to change over time (this blog is having its ten-year anniversary next month; I doubt that I’m even the same person I was ten months ago), I still stand by every word I’ve put down here, if for no other reason than they genuinely represent my understanding of things when I initially wrote them. What I’ve written here is no different.
Besides, if someone truly ends up being inspired by this review, or indeed by the film itself, to try and act out this particular narrative… that’s probably just a stray droplet of water on what was already a tree with deep roots.
Yeah, not really in the mood for pulling punches on this one, and neither is the film I’m writing about. Based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Andreas Malm, screenwriters Ariela Barer, Jordan Sjol, and Daniel Goldhaber expand on the material to create a fictionalised realisation of Malm’s philosophies concerning action against climate change. The act of adaptation itself becomes a transformative act for the academics of the source material, turning its rhetoric into stone-cold praxis. The film follows a group of eco-terrorists, all from different walks of life across the United States, who travel to West Texas to set off some homemade explosives on an oil pipeline.
With his directorial debut Cam, Goldhaber showed immense talent in delivering gritty thrills within a given societal niche, backed by plentiful inside-out knowledge and understanding of that space to make it all ring true. And his efficacy is much the same here as, while Tehillah De Castro’s cinematography follows this group through the step-by-step process of making the bombs, setting them up, and setting them off… well, there’s a lot that can go wrong at just about any stage. Daniel Garber’s editing adds a lot to the sheer tension that floods every frame of this film, building things up to a real breath-catching moment… and then leading to one of many flashbacks to show why everyone in this group is here to begin with.
The character portraits we get for every member of this terrorist cell are remarkably complex and fleshed-out, to the point of actively drawing attention to how there’s no singular reason why they got involved. Some are out for revenge for medical problems resulting from pollution and chemical contamination, some got radicalised by social media, some want to protect their land from interference by oil companies, and some are even allies who are mainly here to support loved ones fighting this fight. It even breaks down how the label 'terrorist' functions based on societal context (to borrow a bar from Brother Ali: Warfare is the terrorism of the rich).
On top of that, right from its first scene showing Xochtil (Ariela Barer) slashing the tires on an SUV, it doesn’t present any of them with the impression that the audience will instantly be on their side, or even if they should. It’s more intent on showing these people, who very well could exist in the real world, as they are, flaws and all.
It's an honesty in framing, even when it admits its own bias
towards the subject matter, that helps ease some of the more in-depth
depictions of their work to make the titular Blow Up happen. It goes into quite
a bit of detail regarding the creation and arming of the explosives, similar to
how a viewer could learn how to make crystal meth from common household items by
watching Breaking Bad. Of course, Breaking Bad didn’t actively try and make the
life of a drug dealer look like the best idea, and with the presence of Alisha
(Jayme Lawson), time is regularly taken out to air questions and objections to
the ultimate good of doing something like this. And on the flipside, it even
breaks down how the label ‘terrorist’ functions based on societal context.
But here’s the thing: As I mentioned above, I am a pacifist. I don’t see the validity in violence against other people or living things in general as a means to a positive end. However, my understanding of pacifism leans more to the de-escalation side of things, where some forms of physical force can be used to… well, pacify a given situation, so long as it doesn’t involve going even bigger and causing even worse shit to happen. I would consider acts of self-defence to fall under that same category, and not just when they’re committed by singular people; there are forms of self-defence that involve groups and even entire communities acting together.
There’s also the minor detail of how, well, I don’t really consider violence against property to be an inherently evil thing. When someone is stabbed to death, the point of concern isn’t that their shirt was tore through to do it, or that the blade might’ve been chipped by a bone. It genuinely pisses me off whenever people conflate damage to personal or even state property and damage to actual human life, as if they’re an equal tragedy. Then again, the Western world has historically struggled with figuring out the difference between the two, to the point of treating human beings as property.
So as I watched this, and saw these characters that I… well, I never really formed an opinion as to whether I ‘liked’ these people overall, just that I recognised them as their own selves with their own reasons and interior lives influencing their actions, but these characters I had formed a connection with… honestly, I don’t have it in me to condemn what they do here. The closest I get to that sensation is with the discovery that an actual U.S.counter-terrorism military officer worked as a technical advisor on this film, and even that’s in a more meta context. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time that the U.S. military directly influenced a film’s production, so for all I know, this could be a The Day Shall Come-esque psy-op masquerading as an entertainment product.
But hell, even that side of things is given screen-time here, showing the FBI’s attempts in-story to infiltrate this group. Y’know, the actual alphabet mafia (along with other State-side groups like the CIA, NSA, DEA, NRA, etc.) that threaten the populace into compliance, instead of Queer people who are just trying to exist and who end up getting targeted instead? Oftentimes literally? Because why fight the real fight when you can give yourself an excuse to be a cunt to total strangers, right?
Okay, okay, I’m definitely flying off the handle on this one, but this isn’t exactly a film that invites moderate reactions to things. Daniel Goldhaber treats climate activism and eco-terrorism in as raw and unvarnished a way as Cam did with the camgirl industry and online content creation in general. It’s an incredibly intense and anxiety-riddled thriller where the adherence to realism amplifies a lot of its talking points, both for and against the actions depicted on-screen. I may have some… let’s call them ‘spirited’ reactions and feelings connected to what the film presents and the underlying philosophies it espouses, but more so than anything directly ideological, there’s something about this film’s presentation and sheer gumption that I find rather impressive. From its title down, there are no half-measures taken here, no dilution or sanitisation for the sake of mainstream attention; this is the kind of genital ambition I respect from a modern-day film.
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