Furious path

When Pulp Fiction was released in 1994, it changed the film industry. Not only was the writing and pacing something that was largely unknown (outside of Tarantino's previous effort, Reservoir Dogs), but being an indy release, instead of something from a major studio (which would never, ever have taken the risk that both the material and the host of "non-bankable stars" presented), made many people inside and outside the industry sit up and take notice. But one of the main factors was the theme of the whole film. This was a gangster flick with realistic dialogue; with people who spoke about goofy, random stuff like real people, rather than always directly contributing to the plot ("You know, like Caine in Kung Fu.") One of the instructors at UCLA's prestigious film school said that the year after Pulp Fiction was released, every single senior project resembled it in at least some way. Now that Everything Everywhere All At Once has turned Hollywood on its ear about absurdist comedies, it's likely that we're going to be seeing many more of them. I don't want to accuse Polite Society of borrowing that approach, as it's probable that the latter film was in production long before EEAAO was released, but I feel pretty safe in thinking that almost everyone in the theater on Tuesday had the former film firmly in mind when writer/director Nida Manzoor's production started blossoming into what it becomes.

And, in truth, the overall premise of the film was much more like RRR, which was more fantastical than absurdist, and you can see Manzoor both mocking and embracing the Pakistani culture that is hers, and demonstrating its distinction from the staid English surroundings, even as teenaged Ria (Priya Kansara) does her best to try to fit in. That is, as long as "fitting in" means she can still embrace her alter ego (The Fury) and eventually let it lead her to her preferred career of stuntwoman, like her idol, Eunice Huthart (a stuntwoman in our "real life.") If that sounds like a great foundation for a comedy, it absolutely is, even without the central plot, which is Ria attempting to save her sister, Lena (Ritu Arya), from what Ria believes will be a disaster of a marriage to what seems like the perfect man. Indeed, I could've seen what might've been just as successful a story simply following Ria around and seeing what she (and The Fury) stumble into in the course of daily life. But that would've been much more like Tarantino and not nearly as much a fantasy as the story turns out to be. Throughout, I had a feeling that Manzoor had simply come up with a story that made her laugh and then did her best to convey that sense of humor to everyone else which, for the most part, she succeeded at.

What also made the film funny in a meta sense is that Kansara did so much work that it was almost a star vehicle for an actor not yet a star (but whom almost certainly should become one.) She was the lead and, in many ways, the whole film, as all of the other characters moved in her orbit and she was the driving force of almost all of the action, whether as angst-ridden teenager Ria or The Fury, who always needed a target upon which to focus her furiousness (much like another hero of yore.) One such target is family friend, Raheela (Nimra Bucha) who did a great job of stealing just a bit of the focus from Kansara, turning what resembled a borderline superhero film into more of a Bond-esque exercise in a battle of wits between the presumed bad guy and the hero who needed a mission in life. Alongside of that and one of the elements that kept the film rooted in some form of reality were Shobu Kapoor and Jeff Mirza, Ria and Lena's mother and father, who did a great job in bit roles trying to come to grips with The Fury while keeping up with the Jones-Nawazes. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Seraphina Beh and Ella Bruccoleri, as Ria's friends, Clara and Alba, as well. The two of them were a constant source of humor in the whole scheme, with Beh especially diving into the absurdist themes of the film and her role with gusto.

It's fair to say that perhaps a bit too much time was left to Ria dwelling in the aforementioned angst, as you can feel her frustration at not being understood, but also feel your own frustration when she kept falling into the most obvious of social obstacles, but that's what happens sometimes when one character is carrying so much weight. I'm engaging in a lot of comparisons to try to explain the film, which is kind of complimentary in its own way, since it was still definitely its own thing, even as much as it resembled so many others, intentionally or not. As a long-time fan of comics and superhero stuff, in general, and firmly burned out on the whole Marvel thing, Polite Society was a welcome reminder of just what these kinds of stories can deliver. Recommended.

How to deliver a message

There are a lotta stories and all kinds of ways to tell them. Likewise, there are lots of messages and many different ways to deliver them. The question that every author and director and transmitter and dogmatic is confronted with is: How? How do I tell my story in a way that will bring meaning to it? How do I convey my message in a way that will carry it into the hearts of its readers/listeners/viewers? This, I think, is a quandary no different with How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Inherent to its title and its basic premise, there's no doubt that that this is a message film. This isn't in the same vein as a romantic comedy or a sci-fi epic. This is a bit more down-to-earth, as it were, and wrapped up in very realistic themes that are tied around an actual situation that all of us are currently confronting. The book that it's based on is not an instruction manual as the title implies but rather a spirited defense of the idea of property destruction as a valid response to the destruction of the planet. That, too, is a debatable approach to both delivering one's message and telling the story of those who feel frustrated and powerless in front of the unstoppable tides of profit and modern demands of both industry and the energy production to drive it.

The story that writers Daniel Goldhaber (also the director) and Ariela Barer (who stars in it as Xochitl) extract from the book is a thin one. They're not trying to create elaborate drama. The backstories of all of the characters in the eco-defense/terrorist (feel free to pick your label) group are pretty standard; avenging a lost mother, defending the family land, the outrage of indigenous peoples, and the fury of a terminal disease most likely linked to the pollution that modern industry creates, especially among those not wealthy enough to escape direct exposure. None of these stories are new or particularly interesting, but all of them are either familiar or understandable to anyone who has bothered to pay attention for the last several decades. In fact, one thing that occurred to me halfway through the film was how much better it might be as a mini-series if one actually wanted to create characters that would sit with people, rather than just serve their purpose on the screen and disappear after a couple hours. But that wasn't really the point. The film wasn't created to leave you with lingering thoughts of Theo (Sasha Lane) and her terminal disease or Michael (Forrest Goodluck) and the drive that has led him to cut off most human contact. It was created to point out what the book's author and the film's creators are arguing is the only answer to the looming disaster before us. In that respect, spreading it out over three TV episodes would have drained it of both impact and the constant tension that the film employs to great effect. That tension is physical (the risk of handling homemade explosives) and emotional (the fear of failure, whether by being caught or blown up or simply not succeeding at the statement that they're trying to make) and mental (constantly questioning whether what they're doing is the right thing or even an effective thing) and it keeps the viewer interested by what is, again, pretty much only the framework of character and story. If it were intended to be a drama in prose, it would be a short story. Stretching that into a two-hour film is an accomplishment in and of itself.

But, despite it being entertaining, the one thing that kept nagging at the back of my brain the whole time was the essential inadequacy of blowing up one pipeline from one producer of the toxic sludge that keeps the lights on for many people. There's some justification attempted by Shawn (Marcus Scribner) about affecting oil prices and the response by Alisha (Jayme Lawson) that doing so hurts the poor people who depend on the gasoline to get to their jobs far more than it does the producers of that oil. These are all reasonable, intelligent people who know how the world works to at least some degree. There are a couple like Dwayne (Jake Weary) and Michael who are only interested in lashing out for their own reasons. But there are questions raised, mostly by Alisha, who is the only one committed to what book author Andreas Malm disdained as the environmental movement's commitment to non-violence, which he considers no longer effective or necessary. Most of these characters agree with him and, thus, the essential message of the film becomes that of the book and it's one that's hard to argue with even if, again, the global impact of a single pipeline is not likely to be large enough to generate the response that either Malm or these characters would like. The excellent tension of the film conveys that message better than any soliloquies on the injustice of the situation ever could. This is a problem now that needs to be dealt with now.

But for those concerned, like the whining National Review who referred to it as "sociopathic filmmaking", that this is an actual instructional manual, rest assured that you'll be no closer to constructing an actual IED than you would be trying to learn how to make crystal meth from Breaking Bad. My favorite part of Armond White's opinion in NR was that the film was being used to "enforce partisanship", which means that the GOP knows that they're on the wrong side of an issue and has to accuse someone of implicitly siding with the opposition rather than ever admit that. White and others like him should be the ones who are the first to burn when the situation that Chevron and companies like them have created comes crashing down, if only for turning the survival of the planet and everything inhabiting it into a political football. If by that you assume that I'm on the side of those willing to use violence to push back, you're absolutely right. The film didn't need to deliver its message to me, as I've long since internalized it. When I was running the Green party in Michigan, the most difficult part of the party's central philosophy that I had to continue to convey was non-violence, as some situations simply demand it. That's the story that I'd be telling, too.