Exactly five years ago today, an
offshore oil-drilling rig called the Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of
Mexico killing 11 people and leading to the biggest oil spill in human history
– 76 million gallons over 87 days.
Although claiming responsibility almost immediately (how could they not)
the oil giant BP are still depriving
claimants out of compensation money and the industry has still not learned the
lessons from such a devastating disaster.
The
Great Invisible begins
with the individual stories of the tragic loss of life on the day itself and
how it affected the families of the deceased.
Told through moving interviews and ominous home videos, the families and
survivors explain how the conditions on the rigs were exhausting and that
cost-cutting measures resulted in instant income bonuses, regardless of
safety. Then the documentary leads into
how the environmental catastrophe affected the livelihood of thousands of
fishing towns along the South Coast of Texas, Louisiana and Alabama, and how
whole communities have been devastated due to the polluting of the sea life and
the mismanaged response from the Oil giants as well as the federal governments.
The characters in the film range from
sleazy corporate suits like Kenneth Feinberg – the advisor put in charge of
distributing BP’s ‘oil spill compensation funds – who speak on behalf of big
business and have little sympathy for actual people, to Roosevelt Harris – a
volunteer who gives out food to local oyster shuckers and fisherman. One of the hardest hit areas acquired the
nickname Hard Luck City complete with hand-painted signs such as ‘nothing left
to steal, stay out’ on trailers and wooden shacks…
This is then contrasted with broadcast
footage from the House of Representatives Energy Committee where five CEOs and
Presidents from the oil companies have the audacity to claim that they knew
nothing about the potential safety risks before the explosion and present
comically shallow emergency response literature to incredulous politicians. I really wish more people would watch these
kinds of committee hearings as they always give such a damming insight into the
cold, cartoonish capitalists that run big businesses and perhaps the public
would become more critical of their incompetence and greed…
The irony of the film is that all of the
characters onscreen are social conservatives that want nothing more than to
keep the status quo but for vastly different reasons: the fisherman want to keep on fishing, and
the businessmen want to keep on drilling.
At one point a retired oil worker amusingly claims at one point that oil
is a gift from God and that the concept of ‘fossil fuels’ is just a theory. But what is missing is a third voice perhaps
suggesting that renewable energy could benefit both groups of people
(eventually)
The
Great Invisible is from
the same team that produced An
Inconvenient Truth – a film that genuinely seemed to resonate on its
release – yet has arrived at a time of supposed increased apathy towards
environmental issues. A quick scan of the
major news outlets of the USA show more coverage to the 16th anniversary
of Columbine (itself an enormous tragedy, of course) than to the biggest man-made
environmental disaster in human history.
If only Netflix insisted that every 10th
piece of content watched was an awareness-raising documentary… then perhaps
audiences would renege on their climate fatigue and pressure would grow on corrupt
businesses to stop literally ruining
the world.
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