Plug in and go
While I am of course sympathetic to the political goals of the Michael Moore school of documentary-making, I think that the aesthetics and intellectual fortitude of the films are inconsistent, to say the least. Yet there's a certain cheefulness in the way that filmmakers stuff these cinematic essays full of hard fact, dubious innuendo and a sprinkle of paranoia that keeps me coming back.
In the case of Who Killed the Electric Car? there's even a bit of stylistic flair to appreciate. The film is perfectly open about its biases - the GM Electric Vehicle program was the most important automaking initiative of the 1990's, and shuttering it was an immoral act - and this allows director Chris Paine to structure the film as a criminal investigation into all of the players - capitalism, Big Oil, GM, the government - who had a hand in the electric car's demise.
At times, the film plays too much like a love letter to the EV1, the pilot car of GM's program, released to a small number of Californians (all of whom are from Hollywood, so far as the film tells us) and then recalled under mysterious circumstances. Whether Paine had an EV1 I cannot say, but he clearly resents that he doesn't have one now. And while I understand the point of agitprop is not to give a well-rounded view of the world, but I would have liked it a little bit if the film offered some of the negatives of the EV1 with anything approaching fairness (one of the film's great missteps is in its treatment of consumer response to the electric car; at no point are we given any indication of what such a car might actually cost. Through research I know that it was approximately $40,000; it is not just unfair but foolish of Paine to ignore this figure, which was not ruinously high to begin with, and would have certainly descended in the interim time).
Of course, the point isn't to be an economics textbook, but to highlight the corruption in modern American industry, and the film does this admirably. I will not go through all of its arguments and debate which are likely and which are patently absurd, but I will say that as a whole, the film presents a convincing case that the electric car had powerful enemies, and therefore an uneven playing field. I left the film frustrated by the situation it described, and fairly nihilistic at the idea of anything changing for the better. I am not certain this is the reaction Paine intended, but it speaks to the degree to which he convinced me.
Aside from the quality of its arguments, the film's presentation is unexceptional. To be honest, I felt very much like I was watching an extended History or Discovery Channel documentary. To begin with, there is the Martin Sheen narration, which lends the whole a sense of gravitas, but Sheenian gravitas is perhaps not so profound as one might hope for. And Sheen is as good as it gets, besides a brief interview with Mel Gibson in the world's ugliest beard - the film goes too often to the well of non-celebrities talking about their EV1 experiences, and it becomes a bit embarassing. Far more effective are the interviews with GM execs, environmentalists and politicians, and even if they drive the film into talking head territory, at least they know what they're talking about. But even here the film looks...there's no word for it but "cheap," and I hate to say that, because I understand that documentaries are rarely gifted with multimillion dollar budgets, but surely it's possible for something screening in a theater to look like it was shot on anything other than cable-quality video?
7/10
In the case of Who Killed the Electric Car? there's even a bit of stylistic flair to appreciate. The film is perfectly open about its biases - the GM Electric Vehicle program was the most important automaking initiative of the 1990's, and shuttering it was an immoral act - and this allows director Chris Paine to structure the film as a criminal investigation into all of the players - capitalism, Big Oil, GM, the government - who had a hand in the electric car's demise.
At times, the film plays too much like a love letter to the EV1, the pilot car of GM's program, released to a small number of Californians (all of whom are from Hollywood, so far as the film tells us) and then recalled under mysterious circumstances. Whether Paine had an EV1 I cannot say, but he clearly resents that he doesn't have one now. And while I understand the point of agitprop is not to give a well-rounded view of the world, but I would have liked it a little bit if the film offered some of the negatives of the EV1 with anything approaching fairness (one of the film's great missteps is in its treatment of consumer response to the electric car; at no point are we given any indication of what such a car might actually cost. Through research I know that it was approximately $40,000; it is not just unfair but foolish of Paine to ignore this figure, which was not ruinously high to begin with, and would have certainly descended in the interim time).
Of course, the point isn't to be an economics textbook, but to highlight the corruption in modern American industry, and the film does this admirably. I will not go through all of its arguments and debate which are likely and which are patently absurd, but I will say that as a whole, the film presents a convincing case that the electric car had powerful enemies, and therefore an uneven playing field. I left the film frustrated by the situation it described, and fairly nihilistic at the idea of anything changing for the better. I am not certain this is the reaction Paine intended, but it speaks to the degree to which he convinced me.
Aside from the quality of its arguments, the film's presentation is unexceptional. To be honest, I felt very much like I was watching an extended History or Discovery Channel documentary. To begin with, there is the Martin Sheen narration, which lends the whole a sense of gravitas, but Sheenian gravitas is perhaps not so profound as one might hope for. And Sheen is as good as it gets, besides a brief interview with Mel Gibson in the world's ugliest beard - the film goes too often to the well of non-celebrities talking about their EV1 experiences, and it becomes a bit embarassing. Far more effective are the interviews with GM execs, environmentalists and politicians, and even if they drive the film into talking head territory, at least they know what they're talking about. But even here the film looks...there's no word for it but "cheap," and I hate to say that, because I understand that documentaries are rarely gifted with multimillion dollar budgets, but surely it's possible for something screening in a theater to look like it was shot on anything other than cable-quality video?
7/10
Categories: documentaries
