Write on Human Rights: Take Four

Next up in Facets' "blog the Human Rights Watch Film Festival" contest: John K. Wilson's review of Joe Berlinger's Crude!


With Crude, the powerful documentary about the destruction to the Ecuadorian Amazon caused by Chevron-Texaco’s oil spills, director Joe Berlinger has made two movies. No, I'm not talking about some intricate storyline or the “he said-corporation said” technique of firm neutrality idolized by the mainstream media. Berlinger’s film has a clear point of view, and although Chevron gets heard in the movie (including a video of its self-serving defense), there's no doubt about where lies his sympathies—and the truth.

The two movies I'm referring to are the movies that appear in people's heads, the difference between Crude when Berlinger made it and Crude in the aftermath of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. I've seen Crude both before and after the BP spill, and I think it has become a much more personal and powerful movie to Americans. What was a disaster to “them” is now a disaster to “us.”

As one of the environmentalists in the movie put it, “but the Exxon Valdez was in the United States so this doesn't matter.” Commercial fishing and American tourists are always regarded as more valuable than Ecuadorian peasants and natural treasures.

It's hard not to be moved by crying mothers whose children have cancer, and are unable to pay for treatment, or animals dying of contaminated water. But we've seen suffering in other countries, in other movies, and grown accustomed to it. The BP spill helps shake that feeling of distance.

One thing is consistent across both viewings of Crude: my annoyance at the appearance of Sting's wife Trudie Styler for a celebrity sympathy spot. Yet I can't blame Styler and Sting for being concerned about a terrible injustice and lending their voices to helping it. I can't blame the environmentalists, who probably did more for the Ecuadorian cause with that concert appearance than all of the journalists who ever covered the story. And I can't blame Berlinger for including a big-name celebrity in the documentary. It's compelling to watch, and he's very effective at showing the lawyers coaching Styler at one point in the jungle: “try to use the word Texaco as much as possible.” I suppose I have to be annoyed at the media and all of us who have a caring switch that can't be turned on without the help of a celebrity parachuting in to witness the horror.

The celebrities are already caring about the BP spill, and soon there will be documentaries like Crude to tell the tale of the Gulf disaster. We will probably see the same shareholder meetings with executives denying any wrongdoing or blaming it on others, the lawyers delaying trials for decades on end with the hope that BP has the deepest pockets. The Aguinda v. Texaco case in Ecuador, already 17 years old, could take another decade before it is resolved.

The Ecuadorian legal system might not be more fair than its American counterpart (Chevron won a motion in an American court after nine years of battles to send it to Ecuador), but it's certainly much more entertaining, as when the human rights lawyer yells “this is a corrupt Texaco lawyer” in front of the judge (and the television cameras). It's fun to watch a field inspection with lawyers in hats giving their speeches around a muddy polluted field.

Chevron's lawyers complain that the other side only wants “two checks,” for the Amazon Defense Fund and the lawyers. Berlinger's editing is clever and, yes, manipulative, such as when Chevron's lawyer condemns the class action lawsuit and tries to smear the other side's lawyers by declaring, “this is a business. It is sponsored in order to get a profit!” After seeing the destruction caused by the blind pursuit of oil company profits, it's hard not to laugh at such chutzpah.

There is also another story about Crude--the story of the legal fight over the documentary. Berlinger has been sued by Chevron, seeking 600 hours of the raw footage recorded for the movie, hoping to find something incriminating to use in the lawsuit. Berlinger has raised over $24,000 on the Kickstarter.com site, and spent his own money to defend his film against this legal action. If Berlinger loses, then any journalist could be sued for recordings of any discussions made by any litigant or lawyer against a major corporation.

In May 2010, a federal judge ordered Berlinger to turn over his video, although Berlinger was granted a temporary stay while he appeals the ruling. If Berlinger loses, then documentary filmmaker and journalism of all kinds will suffer from the loss of the reporter's privilege.

The fact that Chevron/Texaco is despoiling the First Amendment with the same fervor it used for the land in Ecuador may seem like minor damage compared to the harm done to human lives and the environment. But journalists like Berlinger are the reason why we remember and understand the harm corporations do when they are unregulated by the government and ignored by the media. Crude is a movie about a legal battle over the harm caused by unchecked corporate power, and the legal battle over the movie is one more example of why we can't let corporations control our lives.