Ok, my wife and I made it to our first Silver Docs film for the year. We went to see "Crude" which was shown last night. It is an important film by a well know director (Joe Berlinger) and we expected a treat. However, the film did not really do it for us. It was a bit long and tedious and frankly, disorganized. The film does cover the human interest portion of the Texaco oil disaster in Ecuador, but really does not cover a whole lot more. There is very little background or historical information about the issue. Texaco is made to be the bad boy but the truth is that there must have been plenty of bad boys involved to make such a mess of things. Very little information is given on the successive Ecuadorian governments that were willing participants in the scheme to exploit the rain forest for oil or the state's relationship with the Indians who lived on the land before and after the disaster. Much time is wasted on redundancy and the filmed needed to be streamlined and better organized. There is a long piece about the singer Sting's wife and her visit and support. It is all nice but really did not deserve the time wasted and was not that material to the subject of the documentary.
All of this, plus the jerky, in your face, hand filming that sort of made me seasick made the film less than a stellar experience.
I appreciate Berlinger's effort as this is a critical story that needs to be out in the public eye.
There are many more juicy selections on the Silver Docs film festival. If you got some time this week you should check it out.
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