How to Blow Up a Pipeline

dir: Daniel Goldhaber

2023

Wow. This flick isn’t fucking around.

In a trend that is getting more prevalent, film titles are being awfully literal these days. Plane was about a plane, Cats was about a group of hideous cats, and this film How to Blow Up a Pipeline is about how to blow up a pipeline.

I am not advocating for civil disobedience, property damage, or so-called eco-terrorism. If anything, I am a card carrying member of the Establishment that every activist says they are against and every politician pretends they’re not a part of.

In short, I’ve been working for the Empire for decades, so make of that what you will. But I am also a human with eyes and ears, and I look at the inexorable march of time, and the continuous destruction of the environment and the climate, and I can see how so many activists and concerned citizens, tired of marching, tired of holding placards and being ignored or demonised could eventually think “fuck it – protesting isn’t getting the job done.” They know, like a lot of us do, that too many vested interests make too much money from the fossil fuel industry to ever do anything actually against those interests. As such, the markets should be allowed to decide what the oil price should be.

After someone blows up their pipelines and fucks up production, of course.

The activists here are not naïve. They know this action will do little in either the short or medium term. But it’s meant to show people what can be done.

So, given the name, it goes into great detail about the “how”, but there is much made of “why” as well. The “why” is not just about the parlous state of the climate, with its once in a hundred year floods happening every other year, its atmospheric rivers and its wildfires resulting in smoke plumes circling the earth. The “whys” are personal and different, depending on the person.

An unprecedented heat wave kills Xochitl’s mum (Ariela Barer), who lives in the heavily polluted (meaning ‘poor’) area of Long Beach, California, presumably named after the cigarette brand. If the name ‘Xochitl’ scares you, most people pronounce it as ‘So-shi’, so calm your horses and call off your dogs before writing an outraged post on Facebook or a ‘letter to the editor’ in crayon about how everyone on screen these days doesn’t look or have the same names as people 50 years ago.

Xochitl is an activist who attacks large SUVs, and leaves a leaflet on the windscreen afterwards explaining why she did it. If I owned that large SUV that got terrible miles to the gallon and cost upwards of $200 a pop to fill up, I’d be pretty fucking angry about having to replace two of my tyres. And I’d probably not be in the ideal state of mind to read the leaflet, and be amenable to the arguments made about how my purchase and continued use of such a vehicle is contributing to man-made climate change. But then in order to own such a vehicle I’d pretty much have to be an irredeemable arsehole anyway who probably didn’t believe in or understand climate change, and so the experience would make me even more likely to shoot things or run people over.

But still. You gotta try. Attacking cars one at a time is amateur hour stuff. Xochitl wants to do something substantial, something meaningful, and draws together like minded people sick of toiling in obscurity at the margins, sick of being easily ignored.

Her close friend Theo (Sasha Lane) has some form of leukemia, and it must just be a coincidence that she grew up in the same polluted poor area near the refinery at Long Beach. She, too, is inspired to do something, independent of her substance abuse issues.

Shawn (Marcus Scribner), a chap from university studying alongside Xochitl, is also inspired, perhaps by her arguments, but also perhaps from doomscrolling through climate related catastrophes for long enough that doing nothing seems impolite, at the very least.

Then there’s the good old boy Dwayne (Jake Weary), who otherwise wouldn’t seem like he’d associate with the likes of these freaks and hippies. But the oil company done colluded with The Gov’ment to steal his land through Eminent Domain (we call it “compulsory acquisition” here, which sounds much nicer). Eminent Domain is, for those old enough to know the beloved Australian classic The Castle, the legal pretext by which the government tries to take over the Kerrigan family home in order to expand the airport.

Boo, I boo what you’re doing, evil companies and worse governments taking people’s homes out of greed.

On the other hand, if they were to be using eminent domain to stop these bloody companies doing what they’re doing… presumably that would be a good thing?

Let’s not get into that. This isn’t the place for a nuanced discussion. There’s also one more crucial piece of the puzzle, being Michael (Forrest Goodluck). As well as being a First Nations person whose tribal lands have been horribly affected by the fossil fuel companies, he also has the skills to actually put stuff together that goes boom in loud and revolutionary ways, from watching Youtube videos, presumably.

Of course, he’s no expert, so there’s the danger that they’ll blow each other up before they get anywhere near a pipeline, theoretical or otherwise.

There’s also a young couple who seem like they’re auditioning for roles in a remake of Sid and Nancy, just with less heroin and way less domestic abuse, and they’re really the least believable part of the movie. And while they’re pretty chaotic, they may not exactly be what they seem to be.

This is fiction, make no mistake, even though it could be seen loosely as an approximation of some actions taken by activists against the Dakota Access Pipeline back in 2016. But the book this flick shares a title with is not fiction – it’s an argument about how and why such radical actions like blowing up a pipeline are not only morally justifiable but necessary given that much of the planet is either covered in viruses, under water, on fire or an unholy combination of all three.

Of any of the recent flicks that I’ve seen that I can think of that weren’t referring to specific events, as in, they were fictional, but had characters fighting the powers that be, the only other ones I can think of were the great Athena by Romain Gavras, and slightly less great Nocturama, which are probably by no coincidence both French flicks.

In those flicks young angry people, whether idealistic or radicalised or both, want to strike a blow against the powers that be, and they strike that blow, somewhat, but pretty much pay the ultimate price. There are multiple messages one draws from that: the system is so entrenched that nothing anyone does can make a difference; the cops are tools of the ruling class and kill anyone that threatens the capitalistic elites profiting from the environment’s ongoing degradation; you can’t fight City Hall.

These are not cheery messages, no matter how sobering or accurate it might feel.

This flick is arguing something different: that the actions of dedicated, thoughtful people can make a difference, even if they’re prepared to make sacrifices, and can threaten the establishment enough to force it to change course.

Is that a credible message in this day and age? Specifically in the American context, I really don’t know. A certain subset of Americans seem like they’d like to blow up or shoot a whole bunch of people on the other side of an ideological or political divide already, completely independently of any environmental concern. The people that hold some of these positions, that would see them justifying blowing up Target stores maybe because of Pride displays, or shooting cans of Bud Light because a trans influencer was paid to, um, influence people through marketing: they probably think they’re justified no matter how awful their thinking or their actions.

Make no mistake, this film is advocating an extreme position, in that “radical action is justified if the perceived threat is great enough”. I can’t bring myself to sign on to something like that, because every extremist has always thought their ends justified their means, and look where that gets you, and the people you trample along the way.

And yet… this flick makes a compelling case, and structures the flick beautifully, with all the meticulousness of a bank heist, with the exquisite precision of a very well thought out plan, which has to bump up against the reality of random shit happening and causing those plans to fly out the window. The flick beautifully manages to maintain tension throughout, because for everything that we think we know about what’s going on, and what could happen to derail it, there’s another level we’re not aware of that’s really well thought out and really well realised.

I won’t belabor the performances, but everyone does fine in their roles, however limited their time onscreen has to be because of the sheer number of people. There are more actors here than in the average Fast & the Furious flick, but that’s fine, and far more worth it in this instance.

People’s individual consciences are going to have to be their guide when it comes to something like this, but good goddamn does this flick make a compelling case.

8 times I guess the answer, if the title is a question, is “with explosives and the power of teamwork” out of 10

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“If the American Empire calls us terrorists we must be doing something right” – yeah, just like on January 6th - How to Blow Up a Pipeline