“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” offers a version of the glass of water test. If you see the glass as half empty, you will believe the movie to be a superficial representation of the climate change crisis and the activists striving to affect change. If you see it as half full, you will appreciate that the filmmakers have goosed a heist-movie formula with political tang, adding a teaspoon of genre shenanigans to help the agitprop message go down.
I’m in a glass half-full frame of mind today.
Director Daniel Goldhaber and co-writers Ariela Barer (who also co-stars) and Jordan Sjol have subsumed Andreas Malm’s nonfiction book of the same name into a fictional thriller in which several 20-something adults from various parts of the country unite in the West Texas desert to, well, take a guess. They hope to ignite a chain reaction of copycat strikes that will bring the oil industry to its knees. They feel that peaceful protest is useless and that the only way to stop or even slow down the corporations killing our planet is to hit them via the only means they value: the pocketbook.
Climate change is undeniably real, and anyone insisting otherwise is trying to either sell you something or distract your attention from something else. I am old enough to remember when Virginia had four distinct seasons rather than six months of dry, lifeless, mind-numbingly humid August followed by another six months of wan impressions of other weather patterns. But climate change has the same problem as many issues that divide us: It’s kind of boring to discuss, sounds impossible to address, and the people most passionate about it have a habit of coming off as priggish zealots. This is why a shrewd pop thriller isn’t to be taken for granted. Such an enterprise can incite anger without smothering you in righteous virtue.
Goldhaber allows his characters to be something that you might not expect from a movie with an agenda: human. Some of these folks are very serious, such as Michael (Forrest Goodluck), who picks fights with oil field works near his North Dakota home, and has a gift for mixing chemicals into explosives. Goodluck is someone to watch, his intensity is natural and chilling, and he refuses to sentimentalize his character’s obsessiveness. Some of Michael’s co-conspirators, however, such as Logan (Lukas Gage), seem like they’re just screwing around, intoxicated with the idea of rationalizing boozing and squatting as acts of rebellion. Others still, such as Alisha (Jayme Lawson, another one to watch), are even allowed to voice persuasive arguments for why violence is not a solution. Impeding the flow of oil affects oil prices, as companies are happy to stick struggling consumers with their increased overhead.
As the aspiring radicals unite to commit the titular action, Goldhaber parcels out their backstories, shamelessly crafted to suit the needs of the plot. Everyone has a visceral reason to hate oil companies, and one character even refers to this information as her “origin story.” The contrivances don’t nag too much while watching the movie, though. Goldhaber has a flair for visuals that are moody and naturalistic at once, and Gavin Brivik’s synth score probably intentionally evokes William Friedkin movies like the neglected masterpiece “Sorcerer,” a remake of “The Wages of Fear,” both of which pivot on desperate characters risking their lives to transport dangerous chemicals for indifferent companies. “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” is an inverse of these narratives with desperate characters taking similar actions to stop such companies.
The flashbacks, the chapter headings— all heist movie 101, especially in the wake of formative movies like Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservation Dogs.” But a heist movie driven by people with a selfless aim is unusual, reminiscent of Kelly Reichardt’s even more haunting “Night Moves.” You may find these characters admirable, foolish, or both, but vanity is the only personal need they are possibly seeking to gratify, and Goldhaber acknowledges this motivation as well. The anger and hopelessness of the characters truly scans, and it’s more forceful for being allowed to arise out of the cracks of an entertainment. In this fashion, “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” recalls “Emily the Criminal,” as both bridge contemporary anxieties with classical genre frameworks; and both manage to have their cake and eat it.
The jagged edited and the sense of detail of “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” are especially vivid. The close-ups of chemicals being mixed, the nearly unbearable weight of the barrel that’s to serve as the primary bomb, the West Texan hovel where the group hides out—these elements have a lived-in specificity that lingers. The film is often two things at once: livewire and seemingly casual.
The disparity of the group honors the conventions of the heist film and also, in this context, lands a resonant point: These people, of varying races and incomes and political identities, have come to understand that they share an enemy. That’s how an old-school, God-fearing, working-class family man like Dwayne (Jake Weary, yet another to watch) can come to collaborate with folks he might otherwise fight with on Twitter and Facebook. Goldhaber wisely allows us to discern this irony, and this poignancy, for ourselves. Otherwise the film might have felt unbearably preachy.
One can easily imagine the left-wing soap box on which someone like Dwayne is ridiculed as a yokel, and one can just as easily picture the right-wing fantasy in which other characters are humiliated for their sensitivities and naiveté about “real life.” Goldhaber avoids both pitfalls. The pipelines and oil derricks are framed here as evil leviathans that are driving everyone in their proximity crazy. But will blowing up a pipeline slay the leviathan? Goldhaber sees that question as beside the point. His concern is the rage of a generation that has a right to feel betrayed. The film’s ending is neither entirely glorious nor futile. Instead, it is a pointed, irresolute mic drop.
“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” is now playing at Movieland at Boulevard Square. 104 minutes.
