(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Film director Werner Boote (known for the films) Plastic Planet og Everything Under Control) and Kathrin Hartmann, environmentalist and sustainability expert, have made documentaries together. The Green Lie reveals the bitter truth behind "environmentally smart consumption", and points out ethical consumption as the latest in brainwashing: "greenwashing". The film is funded by the Austrian Film Institute, the Vienna Film Fund and the Austrian public broadcaster, ORF. With its human first-person narrative, it caters to both the art film audience and the majority of today's consumers. Like the film's funding, the audience will be composed.
Tighten structure. Contrary to its broadly themed theme, the film has a tight dramatic structure, with two main pillars: One is the protagonist, who undergoes an important change throughout the film. The other is the narrative way, where the main thing is contrasts. The portrait of the protagonist – an enlightened and responsible European consumer, who at the outset defines himself as someone who had a happy childhood, learned to be kind, polite, avoid arguing and usually seek harmony – is contrasted with his antagonists : his colleague, Kathrin Hartmann, who is an environmentalist and co-author of the film, and other experts they meet while working, and who gradually help Hartmann uncover the unpleasant truths behind Boote's comfortable consumer ideas.
Thanks to the film's narrative structure, and the excellent photography of Dominik Spritzendorfer and Mario Hoetschl, the examples of greenwashing are filtered along with dialogues between Boote and Hartmann, and the interviews with experts, activists and protagonists. It becomes an informative journey through the world.
The film reveals the bitter truth behind environmentally smart consumption, and points out ethical consumption as the latest in brainwashing: "greenwashing".
The examples of greenwashing are also presented via contrasts. During the field investigations of palm oil plantations in Indonesia, the protagonist walks around with M & M candy in his pocket, and is amazed by the barren, black, smoky land where the rainforest has been burned down to make room for the palm plantation, which is used to make the key ingredient in his candy. At the same time as activists explain how certificates for sustainably produced palm oil are used to "cleanse" the oil produced in this devastated area, the palm oil industry is organizing a conference, where children and the elderly, dressed in traditional folk costumes, dance to traditional music and create an atmosphere of a exotic wellness center.
Contrasting images. The petroleum industry investigation begins with the story of BP and the company's $ 200 million investment in a public relations operation, in connection with the name change from British Petroleum to Beyond Petroleum. The story is accompanied by footage from a heavy sandy beach – and pictures of giant red flames, which document how an oil well exploded on April 20, 2010, killing nine workers. The oil burned 87 days in a row.
An electric car as an alternative to cars powered by traditional fossil fuels is a contrast in itself. The joy Boote feels by running it, as a lived consumer experience, is contrasted with hard facts. You see no dirty exhaust coming out of it, you hear no noises, there is no pollution – you can just continue to enjoy its use. But you can only do that if you forget that huge amounts of energy are needed to make an electric car: Lithium is extracted in ecologically vulnerable areas, and so large amounts of water are used that there is nothing left for local farmers and indigenous peoples. As an electric car moves silently across the two-lane road, a harmonious landscape of green meadows, blue sea and clear sky is gradually transformed to the opposite: a ruined landscape with brownish gray, bare ground, pools of dirty water and dry lumps of yellowish mud on the roadside . At this largest open coal mine in Germany, coal for the production of electricity (needed to drive organic cars) is extracted. The depiction of the consequences of the fine coal dust – from respiratory illnesses to increased number of cancer cases – is accompanied by advertising for RWE, the owner of the mine, which depicts a huge, green giant repairing the world.
Green is just a color. Initially, consumers are generally too quick to accept the solutions the industry offers ("Green is just a color," Hartmann says), deepened by the experts. Raj Patel defends consumers, who are provided with all kinds of information, but who often get too much of it and not the ability to choose. Decisions such as not taking advantage of children, not killing dolphins and not destroying the environment should not be reduced to choices made by individual consumers. Similarly, Noam Chomsky advocates institutional changes that will remove the need for green lies by putting power under democratic control. It is not hopeless at all, but the changes will not come by themselves.
This is how the polite, conflicting consumer undergoes a change during the film. In the peaceful scene, where the two filmmakers travel by train, the consumer begins to discuss the fear of change, concluding that people must be willing to make change, otherwise nothing will happen. Here we see that the structure – placing the two filmmakers in different conflicting roles – made it possible to present critical thoughts from different perspectives, show the need to be all-inclusive, deal with doubts and fears and counter-arguments. The film offers a more solid solution at the end, but in this critic's opinion is the most important insight The Green Lie gives, that whatever solution, it must be far-reaching.
The Green Lie is an excellent documentary, and also a timely warning to enlightened consumers in the western world, those who would like to protect our common planet, but who often harm it without knowing it. Is there such a thing as ethical consumption? Or do we, if we want to stop harming the earth, completely abandon consumerism?
