Good intentions. When your passion burns, those around you often burn with the same fire. That’s what makes dramatic people so dangerous – their bitterness has the ability to communicate. Kevin Olliffe, eco-terrorist.
Someone commits a crime because they feel an animal need for it, getting rid of which can only be quenched – terrible maniacs in the bodies of charming men torture girls in the darkness of a desert forest belt. Someone commits a crime out of stupidity - young guys start a fight for nothing, from which only one will come out alive, the one who can decide the outcome of the fight with a heavy fist or a knife hidden in his pocket. Someone commits a crime out of jealousy - a fragile woman can make friends with a not fragile gun when her ideal fiancé, who is the envy of all familiar women within a hundred kilometers, decides that he must find something better. Someone commits a crime out of greed - the husband decides that insurance in the amount of a hundred thousand dollars will warm and please his heart more than a tired and indifferent wife, beating him about and without. But there are people who decide to adopt the law because they firmly believe that this is the only way to make humanity wake up and start saving the world from an environmental catastrophe, which they believe will inevitably come if society does not immediately reconsider its attitude to consumption. These young desperate radicals rarely appeared on the big screen, preferring to huddle in modest documentaries or other works created by direct participants of the movement, but in 2013 three major film projects decided to sanctify the unexplored topic of ecoterrorism. One of the most talented women in modern independent cinema, Brit Marling, along with longtime friend and creative partner Zal Batmanglidge, gave birth to the film “East”, which tells about two different ways to fight for the environment and a great variety of other important issues related to the topic, and the second season of the Danish detective series “Bridge” did almost the same thing, with its trademark impartiality. The latest such project at the moment is Kelly Reichardt’s painting Night Movements, which reproduces in detail the day when a group of young radicals and environmentalists plan their lives and blow up a local dam, and a short period of time following this crime.
As you can already see in Vostok, a group of people who set themselves the same good goal and dream of the same bright future for the planet, the people and animals that inhabit it, with all their similarity, can be torn apart by internal contradictions - someone believes that the corporate monster, who, because of the desire to enrich himself, has ruined dozens of people, also deserves death, and someone believes that murder is not the solution; someone thinks that the accidental loss of one innocent life compared to the benefit of a common cause is permissible, and someone believes that this is only a need for civilization, and a good one thinks that it is a good thing, and a good one should include in the environment. In Night Movements, Kelly Ridehart focuses on these kinds of differences, ranging from views of the whole idea and what is permissible and what is not, to arguments about specific technical solutions. At the beginning of the film, the director states that there is a common problem of ecology and a lot of people unanimously admitted that it needs to be solved, but at the same time all these people see completely different solutions to the same problem, and can not come up with a single big plan that would save the planet, if not from death, then even from impoverishment. The main characters of the film are a typical product of these contradictions - desperate to solve the problem with peaceful demonstrations, the deplorable outcome of which was perfectly demonstrated in Stuart Townsend's film The Battle of Seattle, they are consumed by a thirst for immediate action, but despite all their experience, they can not only achieve the perfect plan for a loud statement in defense of the environment.
At first, Night Movements tells a very real story of the preparation and implementation of direct action, such as the one that stirred America in 2006, when eleven activists of the Animal Liberation Front were arrested, whose numerous illegal actions caused farmers twenty-three million dollars in damage, and reveals the equally real possibility that such actions, as not planned, but planned very carefully, can cause accidental death. But in the end, the director chose the slippery path of demonization, telling a situation that is possible hypothetically, but never really happened, sliding from an objective work showing all the pros and cons of the environmental movement in its radical incarnation, into an emotionally devoid independent film, loving to cut off in half words, while in fact these people who were so desperate to save nature or animals through environmental education, and carried this pain in themselves for many years, trying by all means to convey their point of view to society, are full of emotions and feelings, sad stories and serious Marglistock in their own words. The director has every right to fiction, but at the same time, in an era when ecoterrorism has not yet become a well-known word in every house, and such cases are covered extremely scantly and biased by both sides, and those who are for and against, it is very important to maintain the desire to truthfully and honestly portray this topical, complex and multifaceted topic, and remind us that we should all stop tearing each other apart on trifles, building walls and revelling in our own superiority, and together begin to work out steps to solve environmental problems, so that not indifferent young people will no longer have to master bombs at home.