by Vanessa Huang
How to Blow Up a Pipeline is an eco-thriller with a lot of spunk, following a group of activists who want to, well, blow up a pipeline. Loosely based on Andreas Malm’s non-fiction book of the same name, the film traces its propulsive narrative in the style of a heist—but of course, sans robbery.
It’s difficult to imagine a more perfect marriage of form and function than this film, where the thrills of the heist genre meet the urgency of radical climate action. The film is concerned entirely with the ‘heist’ itself, save for a few brief interludes to track the moment each member of this ragtag group was initially radicalised, be it terminal illness arising from living near an oil refinery, or the occupation of Indigenous land for fossil fuel extraction. These moments are particularly significant on two counts. First, for showing that the personal is political—the environment is not something out there like the rolling hills or the rainforest, only brought to our attention by way of a David Attenborough documentary. A warming climate threatens to make the planet entirely uninhabitable, and no lives will be left untouched. Second, for all the pearl-clutching and emphasis on nonviolent protest, violence has too long been excused, so long as the aggressor is the fossil fuel industry and the victims ordinary people with little recourse for their suffering. As the film says, “This was an act of self-defense.”
Editor Daniel Garber makes a lot of sharp cuts between these character histories and the more procedural timeline, in a move sure to upset the stuffy traditionalists opining that editing should be invisible. The stops and starts have a sense of rhythm to them, adding to the pulsing energy of the film. It’s editing that feels thrillingly original, and will undoubtedly be one of the standouts from this season.
These flashbacks aside, director Daniel Goldhaber clearly draws inspiration from Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped. Both films are all about making the methodical and precise seem exhilarating, and necessarily so—if something goes wrong, the consequences could be devastating. Many of the film’s shots are especially tactile, focusing on tiny tremors in hands that are assembling explosives, or the bodies working together to roll a barrel. Goldhaber keeps the tension humming throughout this taut narrative as we edge towards the finish line an inch at a time.
It feels almost revolutionary for an American film to be taking such an unapologetic stance in a climate where fringe environmentalists are all too often portrayed as villains. It’s particularly transgressive among the milquetoast activism that Hollywood tends to celebrate in cinema, where everyone is happy to both-sides all the way down on social issues, all while the industry purports to be a beacon of social progress. How to Blow Up a Pipeline isn’t one for subtlety. It’s fuelled by rage, a filmic equivalent of an explosive and guttural cry, boldly lurching forward to create its own reality.
With the most recent IPCC report yet again declaring climate disaster, How to Blow Up a Pipeline seems a timely antidote to the doomism. The antidote isn’t simply optimism of the think-happy-thoughts variety. When governments talk a good talk but funnel money into fossil fuel expansion time and time again, the answer might just be taking matters into your own hands—anarchistic and daring as it is.
