Plastic, Whales and Capitalism

The Middle East International Film Festival is in town - or it was in town, not our town, but Abu Dhabi. Surprisingly, it featured quite a lot of movies that seemed to have an enviro-political bias -- which is fine by me!

In celebration of our birthdays, we decided to head up to AD for the weekend, stay in a nice hotel, and see three movies that had really caught our attention.

The first movie that we watched was Plastic Planet. Originally in German (as are most of these videos here), the film was introduced by the film maker, Werner Boote, and there was a Q&A session after.

There is no way that I can do this movie justice...

Mr Boote, whose grandfather worked in plastics, takes on the entire plastics industry in a sort of Michael Moore-ish way. He interviews presidents of plastic companies, plastic surgeons, visits a toy manufacturer in China (and later has one of their toys tested to find traces of major, illegal, toxic substances in it), trolls the Pacific ocean with a ship that collects and tests particles from the famous plastic mass, and interviews several scientists who have proven that we, you and I, have plastic in our cells. He discovers that he, himself, has lower fertility due to chemicals associated with normal contact with plastic over a lifetime. One of the scarier interviews was probably an American researcher who found odd results when their lab rats all started miscarrying. She discovered that the plastic cages had been washed with a detergent that degraded the surface of the cage, meaning the rats were now exposed to the chemicals used to make plastic: As she put it, the effect of plastic went through 3 generations - the mother rat, the fetal rat and, in the case of female fetuses, the eggs that were still developing. Scary stuff.

The movie was not super "green" or made for tree-huggers. He didn't interview the president of Greenpeace, he was interviewing scientists. We've been hearing the environmental message for long enough, and it's clear that most companies simply don't care about the effects of their noxious products. When it turns to their own bodies and their children, maybe that will get a reaction. And change.

But what can we do? I've always considered myself an environmentalist, yet I still have a house full of plastic products - I refuse plastic bags and excess packaging when I can and, now that we have a water purifier, no longer have to rely on bottled water to drink out here. It frustrates me that, in many cases, I simply don't have another option than to use products that already come encased in plastic. I think of all my friends who have kids, or who are currently expecting, and wonder how their kids might have been poisoned because we, as consumers, do not always have a choice.

The fact is simply that plastic is made up of dangerous substances. The plastic that you use today will last 500 years, and leech chemicals into the atmosphere, the ground, the water, your blood over those 5 centuries.

Umm, end of diatribe.

The next movie we saw was the incredible Oceans by the same team known for Microcosmos and Winged Migration (Le Peuple Migrateur). This time, it was all about the absolute beauty of the ocean, and the diversity of life that is found there.

First off, it was absolutely amazing visually (Ty said that he looked at me part way through the movie and I was sitting there with my mouth hanging open - and I don't doubt it!). As scuba diving is now one of my favourite hobbies, it was also quite amazing to see these amazing rare animals and realize that I've been lucky enough to actually see some of these creatures in the wild.

Of course, the movie also carried a powerful message. A rather brutal scene featuring a net trapping the same animals that had just been celebrated on screen for their beauty and rarity, and a definned shark gasping at the bottom of the ocean as it slowly dies... these are the images that remain, amongst the scenes of freedom and nature, after the movie.

Jacques Perrin has said that, in making Oceans, he didn't want to simply show how beautiful the undersea world was, since that would lead us to believe that our oceans are actually healthy. The official (French) site is here. It takes a while to load, but if you select "Medias" and "Images" or "Videos", you will be able to see photos or videos taken in the 4 years they spent making the film.

The final movie that we were off to see was Capitalism: A Love Story from Michael Moore. It was a bombardment of facts about corruption in the US government, as well as information about how things could have been different if the banks had not taken complete (deregulated) control of everything.

The preview (posted above) isn't showing the best parts. This was not just Michael Moore's usual stunts - but historical footage, interviews, and scenes where a widow finds out that her husband's death earned his employer 5 million dollars, due to a "Dead Peasants" insurance scam, where even if you've worked for a company for a short while (one woman had worked for Walmart for 18 months 10 years ago), the company - and not your family - gets the insurance payout.

Most interesting, for me, was regarding FD Roosevelt's so-called Second Bill of Rights, which would have protected Americans from just about everything that is wrong with their economic system. The irony is that FDR died before enacting any of these changes. His staff and advisors, however, were the people who were sent out to Germany, Italy and Japan to help them rebuild after WWII. The reforms that could have happened in the US ended up making these countries stronger instead.

Watching all three movies over two days has left me feeling somewhat helpless. Sure, I can continue my personal boycott of shark fin soup, but that will be as effective as my boycott of diamonds. I can refuse a plastic bag at the grocery store, but the next person in line will get the ones I didn't take. It leaves a "little guy" like me feeling like there isn't much I can do, as I'm really not important enough - I'm not the creepy treasurer from Goldman Sachs, eh?

Happily though, the weekend was not all documentaries and environmentalist doom. When we were checking into the Sheraton, we asked if we had a sea view room. They checked the computer and said, "No, I'm sorry. Those rooms are more expensive". My response? "But, but, it's our birthday week!". And they gave us the room... Then, the next day, when checking out, the front desk lady asked us if we'd gotten our cake!

Yup! I got a birthday cake from an international hotel chain! How's that for sticking it to The Man???