How to Blow Up a Pipeline (Daniel Goldhaber, 2022)

[brundlefly]

Finally: How to Blow up a Pipeline from Daniel Goldhaber (Cam).

My sympathies to the NEON marketing department and low-level NSA agents/algorithms tasked with reviewing flagged content.

[DarkImbecile]

A blend of the blunt force political messaging of early Costa-Gavras and Pontecorvo with the deft genre manipulations of of Soderbergh's heist movies, Daniel Goldhaber's How to Blow Up a Pipeline isn't quite as successful as I'm now realizing that particular combination of name-drops might imply, but it is a solidly constructed and efficiently executed low-budget thriller worthy of a recommendation.

There's a welcome economy to the way Goldhaber folds just enough of the backgrounds of the eight eco-terrorists into the otherwise tightly focused procedural spine of the film to offer shading and motivation for (most of) the perfectly diverse group of young people dead-set on disrupting American energy markets. Co-writer and co-lead Ariela Barer plays a college climate activist who becomes impatient with the incrementalist efforts of her peers and recruits a fellow student into a plan for direct action, while others (including American Honey's Sasha Lane, Euphoria/Assassination Nation's Lukas Gage, and The Batman's Jayme Lawson) are drawn in through a combination of personal relationships, the direct impact of the fossil fuel industries on their lives, and previous acts of politically motivated property destruction. The throbbing, synth-driven score and an uncomplicated cinematographic style help keep everything feeling grounded and gritty, even as more and more complications compound to raise the degree of difficulty of the activists' plans.

When not centered on the step-by-step process of building bombs or destroying evidence, the dialogue can be a bit of a weak point, but even the clunkiest discussions of the ethics of attacking energy infrastructure don't last more than a minute or two before the focus is back on building fuses, mixing precursors, and plotting escapes and alibis. The script mostly manages to be firmly on the side of its protagonists without overly glorifying the tactics they've chosen or sugarcoating the results; if anything, the film's coda is pointedly ambivalent as to the fates of these characters and the meaning of their efforts.

Taking into account work like 2018's Cam and his upcoming remake of Faces of Death(!?), Goldhaber's tendencies seem to be more horror-centric than he lets on here, but his control of the suspense is assured enough to make me want to seek out that previous feature (which I know has some fans here) and keep an eye out for him whatever genre he's tackling going forward.

[brundlefly]

A blend of the blunt force political messaging of early Costa-Gavras and Pontecorvo with the deft genre manipulations of of Soderbergh's heist movies, Daniel Goldhaber's How to Blow Up a Pipeline isn't quite as successful as I'm now realizing that particular combination of name-drops might imply, but it is a solidly constructed and efficiently executed low-budget thriller worthy of a recommendation.

Hey did anyone else’s screening include a squirrelly looking kid handing out literature at the door and two undercover FBI agents making out in the back row?

Decision here was to make this sober, straightforward and self-evident, so if you’re unsympathetic or in need of a lecture going in I don’t think you’re going to get much out. Perhaps the biggest strength and largest failing of the project is that it’s practical-minded and indifferent about wanting to convince; it’s useless as agitprop, as plain and exciting as its title, up to you to decide what to do with any of it. Here are some kids, they are going to blow up a pipeline.

I was shocked at how little the movie went shaky handheld; a larger-budgeted film trying to ape integrity and arouse its audience would have done. And taken aback how little time it spent online – given that’s where most of the characters would spend most of their time anyway, given Goldhaber’s last feature took place there, given that this seems the sort of movie that should come with links and comments and wind up on (Letterkenny whisper) The Dark Web. (There are of course texts. Gofundme gets a shout. TikTok is part of one character’s backstory – but the film mostly stays away from iPhone aspect ratio and shuns that platform’s attention-insistent squee.) As much as it adopts a heist structure and as much as it throws up perfunctory snags, there is a lot left on the table in terms of suspense. Paranoia is largely (and it often seems impractically) absent. Outside antagonists only appear in establishing flashbacks and after the day’s work is done. Film keeps the camera mostly steady, the focus on the workers and the work-at-hand. Its cast (Sasha Lane somehow brings automatic bona fide; Ariela Barer and Forrest Goodluck contribute quality energy and presence), scale, and tone keep things where they should be. Low to the ground.

There is a tease, and a twist, but one feels natural and the other satisfying enough as wish-fulfillment to enjoy the manipulation. Couching things in a caper seems more honest than cloaking itself in faux-doc rags. Cam was put forth as mostly Isa Mazzei’s film (she’s a producer and second unit director, here, also contributes “earth-based percussion”); this is a very different project. What the two share are committed engagements with contemporary issues, a willingness to underexplain, and some pretty thin characters. Flashbacks are practically placed throughout Pipeline to fill some gaps and move things forward, all but two members of the gang mostly illustrating a variety of concerns rather than contributing special skills. It can unfortunately feel like an ethnographic checklist, and at times I wished they’d gone for aggressive info dumps rather than wrapping everything into quick-hit backstories; but at least it is not an Avengers Assemble ensemble and does not, like Reichardt’s Night Moves, devolve into a study of outsiders and misfits with a tenuous grip on morality. (Even if one or two participants might only be here because they like to do crimes.) But like Reichardt’s film (which also stayed away from excited camerawork, often observing people within the natural world they were hoping to save), Pipeline takes time to dismiss well-meaning documentaries as useless.

It's the self-evident approach that poses the biggest problems. Even assuming you’re in tune with the politics – again, Team Pipeline, not your feel-good flick – enough seems to go under-considered that it makes the whole enterprise self-contained, feeble. Even if the character motivation boiled down to, “It’s just the fuckin’ world we live in now!” or, “we’re all gonna die lol,” (actual quotes), and you’re sympathetic when the urge to act overrides the usefulness of the action, everything feels so safe and limited you wonder at the bother and sacrifice. Unconvincing medical complications lodge some asterisks in the operation. The media-fed tradition of the omnipotent State demands cool, clever workarounds and the lack of those here make its world seem less real and our gang less certain. Well-aware any financial hit oil companies take will be passed along to consumers (now used to angrily weathering and rationalizing gas prices, right?), it’s at best a publicity stunt. The efficacy of which would usually merit a media dump at the end highlighting reaction and consequence, and though a coda suggests the blow-up’s gotten views, if real-world ramifications are any indicator my empty theater suggests otherwise. Sober head may give lie to the anguished heart, as there’s no galvanizing central figure or exciting, singular cry to make a movement.

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The reveal is satisfying, and sacrificing volunteers to let the rest of the team escape seems reasonable and smart, but the scot-free of it all felt both implausible – no way the FBI isn’t going to at least sniff out the guy who had his land taken – and slightening, like this was as easy to shrug off as a weekend paintball game. But then I have been conditioned to think a return to normalcy demands law and order when it doesn’t and maybe shouldn’t.

(There’s also the problem that, at least as far as I’ve seen reported, there’s less evident eco-terrorism than plans for right-wing terrorism-terrorism, survivalist militia goons contemplating attacking power plants, etc., for their pathetic, delusional neo-Revolutionary/Civil War II. Tangle of means and ends.)

But I still came away modestly impressed and the tone had a lot to do with that. This could have felt like its own self-serving stunt, or yet another anthemic Kids Stick it to the Man flick where you nod and pat its head after handing it its allowance. This manages to feel more right than righteous. It may not be a pure thing. It’s maybe not A Man Escaped, where a man escapes and walks away, having escaped. Here is a movie that got the words How to Blow Up a Pipeline next to each other on marquees for a couple weeks and presumably on Hulu until the grid goes down. Just guess what happens in it.

[flyonthewall2983]

I really dug the music and the credit font, very 80’s