Crude (2009) NYT Critics' Pick

[lsanderson]

An Ecuadorean cancer victim’s reflection in an oil-polluted stream near her home, in an image from the documentary “Crude.”
Big Oil’s Stain in the Amazon
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: September 9, 2009

Because of concerns about climate change, a lot of current environmentalist advocacy — including movies like “An Inconvenient Truth” — concentrates on the dire results of burning fossil fuels. Joe Berlinger’s “Crude,” a thorough and impassioned new documentary, focuses its gaze on production rather than consumption. The film, which follows the fitful progress of a class-action lawsuit undertaken on behalf of the people of the Ecuadorean Amazon, is not about the unintended consequences of using petroleum. Instead, it examines the terrible, frequently unacknowledged costs of extracting oil from the ground. More