Away from the manufactured Zeitgeist of Barbenheimer, one of the most vital, yet criminally underseen environmentalist thrillers of the decade has just dropped on Netflix. The timing couldn’t have been more prescient for How to Blow Up a Pipeline as Europe burns, July is on track to be the hottest month in human history, and the UN secretary general, António Guterres has solemnly proclaimed that “the era of global warming has ended, and the era of global boiling has arrived.”
“Humanity is in the hot seat,” Guterres told a recent press conference. “For vast parts of North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe, it is a cruel summer. For the entire planet, it is a disaster. And for scientists, it is unequivocal – humans are to blame.”
Guterres urged immediate action: “the air is unbreathable, the heat is unbearable, and the level of fossil fuel profits and climate inaction is unacceptable. Leaders must lead. No more hesitancy, no more excuses, no more waiting for others to move first. There is simply no more time for that.”
This urgency is chillingly echoed throughout How to Blow Up a Pipeline. The audience are immediately thrust into a driving montage of ordinary people compelled to action, ditching their everyday lives to convene in West Texas and destroy two sections of pipeline to disrupt the flow of oil causing a spike in prices.
We’re initially unsure of their individual motivations for joining the group, but subtle touches like the background radio broadcast about the growing refugee crisis highlight the global need for their call to arms.
Director Daniel Goldhaber structures his film at times like a heist movie, at others like a WW2 guys on a mission movie. His characters have clearly defined roles – the explosives expert, the recruiter, the planner. Clearly some trust more of the group than others through their tenuous links via college, vague acquaintances or the internet.
The throbbing intensity of their interactions heats up by degrees as we watch them dutifully make the explosives and blasting caps from pages printed from various websites, the digital grandchildren of The Anarchist Cookbook.
The tension is further exacerbated using Reservoir Dogs-style flashbacks that create a series of cliff-hangers as we cut away on vital pieces of action to explore just what drives them to abandon peaceful protest and take direct action.
In most cases, the characters are directly affected by some element of fossil fuel extraction, cancer, the death of family members, financial disaster. The legitimate process of campaigning, disinvestment, and fighting corporations in the courts are shown to be too slow, futile, and ultimately ruinous to the individual. One of the group, Xochitl, exasperated by the collateral damage caused to her family and friends by living in the shadow of an oil refinery states, “We need to start attacking things that are killing us.”
The central premise of How to Blow Up a Pipeline is built around Xochitl’s statement. When is sabotage a legitimate form of self defence against multi-national companies that do us and the world irreparable harm? Are we accelerating closer to crossing the Rubicon where groups like Just Stop Oil disrupt major sporting events, deface art, or block roads for hours.
In turn, governments quietly try to pass laws that criminalise the right to protest and the right to strike. Weren’t countries in WW2 under the tyranny of the Nazis encouraged to become Partisans and fight the genocide threatening their very existence as human beings?
Unlike the neo-realist documentary style of The Battle of Algiers that portrays the escalation in atrocities on both sides following the colonial rule of the French in Algeria, How to Blow Up a Pipeline is clearly sympathetic to the plight of its main protagonists because they represent all of us. Both films discuss what terrorism is and how the actions (or inaction) of individuals, groups and governments will be ultimately judged by history.
In the case of the global catastrophe facing humanity, being judged by history will be a moot point, and for that reason the true film of the current Zeitgeist is most definitely How to Blow Up a Pipeline. As Guterres warns, “Accelerated temperatures demand accelerated action.”