While you’re waiting to learn How to Blow Up a Pipeline — the film will be expanding in the US over coming weeks, and opens in the UK on April 21st — why not check out an earlier example of ecoterrorism drama in the brilliant Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves. This 2014 movie, about three environmental activists planning to blow up a dam in the Pacific Northwest, features an absolutely chilling performance by Jesse Eisenberg, who transforms his often quirky screen presence into something still and unsettlingly resolute. (The terrific cast also includes Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard.)
By comparison with Pipeline, however, what is perhaps more notable is seeing how the depiction of green protesters has shifted. In only a decade, we’ve gone from Move’s unlikable (if also compelling) characters and the suggestion that even apparently selfless acts are always in fact selfish to the young people of Pipeline, who are entirely sympathetic, driven to desperation by the inaction of their elders to what they call — justifiably so — “an act of self-defense.” Does this represent a genuine shift in how our culture is approaching action on global warming and environmental destruction? Only time will tell. (Read my 2014 review.)
US: stream on Fandor (via Prime); rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
UK: stream on Mubi (via Prime); rent on BFI Player and Curzon Home Cinema; rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
See Night Moves at Letterboxd for more viewing options.
