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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
NO IMPACT MAN Minimizing one’s environmental impact can be frustrating, and writer Colin Beavan takes us through the process in all its nitpicking detail. Home composting begets fruit flies, and a Starbuck’s venti latté to go is an unnecessarily wasteful luxury. Reusable diapers and, um, toilet paper, seem like crude anachronisms in today’s culture of offhand disposability. What about a solar powered Manhattan apartment? Compromising, to say the least. Mr. Beavan’s crusade, documented here by seasoned veterans Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein, is less a horror story than a small inspiration. Beavan is as close as it comes to a Manhattan Joe Plummer. Not exactly an Everyman, Beavan is more of an Everyenlightedmiddleclassurbanite, an educated, New York Times-reading, conscientious adult, just like so many of us. But, as Beavan clearly believes, with this title comes great responsibility. We are the keepers of the earth, and it’s time to start acting like it. His one-year experiment involves eliminating all motorized transportation, public or otherwise, avoiding all take-out food and drink, and, in fact, limiting food consumption to only what can be farmed and produced within a small radius of the Manhattan home of Colin, his wife, Michelle, and their infant daughter (much to Michelle’s chagrin, a self-proclaimed Starbucks junkie). Union Square Farmer’s Market becomes Colin’s greatest ally, and a later phase of the process sees the family pulling the plug on the electricity to their home. Coal-powered electrical plants won’t be pumping any of the Beavan’s parts per million of carbon into the atmosphere this year. Criticisms, though, abound. Beavan’s blog (noimpactman.typepad.com) is soon hit with numerous complaints that a self-involved, isolationist effort such as this can hardly accomplish the amount of work required in this time of environmental crisis. True, for every gram of carbon avoided by not powering the television, another gram of natural gas burns away to heat the building. And time-based efforts such as these have a finite ending, and afterward everything often tends to return to business as usual. One year of penance equals a lifetime of redemption. Beavan takes the criticisms to heart, however. He and his family are in a learning process, and the audience is along for the lesson, witnessing a small transformation. By the end of the film, the now tiny stunt is secondary to a greater message. Environmental awareness isn’t just about bringing canvas shopping bags to the market and shutting off the lights. It’s a more holistic approach. The family visits a local upstate farm to actually
see where food comes from. Colin becomes involved in several
environmental activist groups, volunteering whatever time he can afford.
Turning off the television was one of the most effective things the
family could have done for their home life, and avoiding the remote and
mechanized urban economy has put them in touch with each other more than
ever before. It’s a
stunt, and it’s self-involved, true. But there’s a real message to this
film. In responding to the criticisms, Colin and his family are quick to
act. Perhaps living a responsible existence isn’t about having no
impact, but rather having an even greater one.
Michael Lee
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