The Plan
Originally I thought about writing a response to the recent NY Times ding. If you missed it, it’s here. In particular, the recurring idea that the film fails to provide “The Plan.” The Plan to save humanity from, among other things “the polar ice caps melting.” But in counterpointing I realized I’d already written a comment to the same effect about the negative reaction the film garnered from some San Francisco Film Festival attendees (this post.) This movie doesn’t provide the Plan. In fact, for those with eyes to see, it is a rolling critique of Plans. Everything from
- Wendell Berry’s poem which opens, threads and closes the film is an entire critique of “a world made entirely according to plan“
- Prologue’s opening title sequence of a blueprint expanding into a shattered stained-glass aerial which eventually seems to grow into a sickened, decaying organism
- To the closing sequences which return the viewers again to the ruins of a man’s ambitions which are shown in a montage of abandoned plans/development maps
It seems to me that there are more than enough environmental documentaries that proffer variations of a plan. In fact, this trailer seems to suggest You are in fact the hero who will save The Planet. But suppose humanity devices a Plan to save itself from any and all environmental threats. Who is going to save Humanity from Humanity? To bend Jacques Ellul, suicide is at the heart of the system. Like the grizzled old sickle-wielding blandishment says “There’s no way out of it…”
The film takes a leap of faithlessness in man and by extension, our plans. And in doing so, it aspires to do what the Boston Globe’s Ty Burr declares it cannot. Namely, play to the so-called “unconverted.” Those unconverted dispute most of the environmentalist movement’s premises and discard their data. The data can and will be debated until Kingdom come. In my opinion, those who like the film and those who don’t reveal very different views of man.
But hey, it’s cool. It’s a privilege to have a movie in theaters and to have done very well with most critics. But for these few negative reviews, we’d have no way to see things like reader reviews that disagree and make their own case for why they liked the movie. In the case of the NY Times, 4 of 5 reader reviews so far disputed the review and pointed out how flippant and beneath the paper the tone was. Though a small sample point, it seems like it’s hopeful for the film’s overall reception. More respond than don’t, more advocate than denigrate, etc.
Okay, I digress. We now return you to the failing financial system…
Sponsored by the American Dream and subsidized by a credit-fueled speculative bubble of building and buying.
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