Crude

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): ****

Joe Berlinger's (Paradise Lost, Some Kind of Monster, Brother's Keeper) seventh film Crude follows the class-action lawsuit filed by a small group of Ecuadorians residing in the Amazon rainforest, as they go after Chevron for massive industrial pollution that has driven entire tribes of native people out of their homeland.

The litigation is spearheaded by Pablo Fajardo, a young man who grew up in one of the affected villages. Just three years out of law school, he's been put in charge of the fate of his people's customs, land and safety. Assisting him is brash US attorney Steven Donziger and advocacy group Amazon Watch. Filling out the story is a merry-go-round of oil corporation attorneys and scientists. As is the case in so much of Latin America's biography, rampant government corruption is a recurring character.

A more literal version of modern David and Goliath couldn't be imagined. Understandably, oil giant Chevron (who merged with Texaco in 2001, halfway through the film's story) is not terribly threatened by a little bad publicity because really, what are a few dead Amazonian babies when the United States' entire economy rests on your product? Yet Chevron-Texaco deploys an army of attorneys who spend years tying the case up in different jurisdictions, muddying the waters of scientific research and burying judges under reams of briefs (and bribes).

Essentially, this battle comes down to a constant and often irrational public relations campaign. Chevron-Texaco attorneys accuse Fajardo of getting wealthy off of the cause, although we later see he lives in windowless shack with his mother. Donziger becomes frighteningly intense when coaching non-English speakers on how to maximize heartstring-pulling pronouncements at a shareholders meeting. Somehow, Texaco-funded scientists manage to keep straight faces when they declare that the Amazonian people's insidious cancer clusters are caused by lack of hygiene.

But the nuclear option is triggered when Vanity Fair features a spread on the photogenic Fajardo and his equally photogenic cause. This coverage garners the attention of newly elected president Rafael Correa (a young, smart candidate recently swept into office by a massive wave of popularity) and Trudie Styler (aka Mrs. Sting). Fajardo's world quickly changes when he is invited to attend Sting's Earth concert, bringing him international attention. We eventually see Jimmy Smits bestowing CNN's Hero Award on him.

Berlinger stands back and lets us be swept up in (and eventually become mildly terrified by) the garish thrall of the celebrity stampede. But he does not allow the Police's "SOS" (introduced by Cameron Diaz and dedicated by Sting from the stage, natch) to let us us off so easily. While the media coverage undoubtedly influenced Chevron-Texaco being (spoiler alert) found in violation of all charges by inspectors, we are made painfully aware that these companies will never pay a dime to the people who watched their children vomit blood and die excruciating deaths. And they only moved out of the area once the wells ran dry, utterly indifferent to how many customs, languages and people are squelched in the process.

Crude plays at times like the documentary companion piece to Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1953 thriller Wages of Fear (though probably shares more in common with William Friedkin's 1977 re-make Sorcerer). The contrast of industrial greed clashing against the unceasing beauty of the natural world had me waiting in odd earnestness to see a washed out bridge or quicksand wipe out the interlopers. We want to cheer for nature to defend itself. Berlinger shows us the sad and gruesome reality is far more determined by wealth and power.

See also: Oblivion, Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi, Our Brand is Crisis, End of Suburbia, Terror's Advocate.