I’ve just this minute finished watching Dirty Oil, an Erin Brokovich style documentary into the oil industry in the US and Canada written, edited and directed by Leslie Iwerks who previously brought us The Pixar Story. This is the first movie that I’ve been able to review at home in ages and I thought I better get my thoughts down now before the next busy piece of work comes along.
Dirty Oil starts off by interviewing random Americans asking them where they think that most of their countries oil comes from. They all give the most obvious, and you’d think correct answer ‘The Middle East’ or ‘Saudi Arabia’. After the rolling credits end and the narration (given by Neve Campbell) begins, we learn that Canada is actually now the largest supplier of oil to the United States of America. This came as a rather large surprise to me, especially when we saw that the amount of land destroyed to manage this immense production has increased to the size of Florida. When you get a second, have a look at this US map and you can see how big that really is. We’re then given some stats which include the US currently uses 30% of the world’s automobiles, US gas consumption currently uses the same amount as the next 20 top countries combined and the amount of gas pollution from oil refineries at tar sands produces the same amount of emition as 1.34 million cars per day. We are also enlightened to the fact that Canada homes one of the largest forest in the world which also comes under threat from the oil industry.
Rather than focusing on the standard consumer base that we see in these documentaries, Iwerks introduces an Aboriginal community in Alberta who are being affected by the strip mining happening up the river from where they live. The government are denying they are affected in any way but research from independent bodies is proving otherwise as can be seen in the documentary. It’s interesting that words like ‘asthma’ or ‘cancer’ didn’t exist in their language until the huge oil refineries moved in.
It was nice to see the end of the documentary looks to the positives of what is currently being done in the US (and the world) and doesn’t just focus on all the bad that we are doing to the world. Iwerks does a great job directing this. It must have been very hard to film as it’s not a film based on a true story, this is the story. She calls in experts who have been researching and writing about this very topic for decades to produce a gritty, hard hitting and emotional look into the world’s use of natural resources and how we are dealing with it.
If you want to see the effects of what we are doing to our planet or want further information visit the Dirty Oil website here or view the trailer below.
