Reviewed by RaeAnne Marsh
(from the 2008 Sedona International Film Festival)
Director: Joshua Tickell
Documentary includes appearances by: Larry Hagman, Woody Harrelson, Willie Nelson, Julia Roberts and Neil Young Fields of Fuel is an ecological disaster documentary with a surprising message: It's not that hard to do something to improve the environment. In fact, SUV-lovers rejoice - even you need not feel your lifestyle is being threatened. Any diesel engine can make the switch cold turkey.
The fields of fuel to which filmmaker Josh Tickell refers in his title are agricultural crops that can be converted to bio-fuel. Sound unlikely? He underscores the reality of it in a memorable scene that has him pulling his diesel Winnebago (a.k.a. the Veggie Van) up to the drive-thru window of a fast food burger stand and ordering gallons of their used vegetable frying oil to fill up his gas tank.
Hopeful and humorous, Fields of Fuel is a highly entertaining film. It is also a case study supporting Marshall McLuhan's famous observation that "the medium is the message"; tapping into the power film holds in today's culture, Tickell decided a movie would be the best bridge to an audience. Film school counts for two of the twelve years it took this bioscientist/filmmaker to bring Fields of Fuel to the screen.
Tickell's journey of creation begins in Australia, where his American mother fills his head with bucolic images of the Louisiana of her childhood. He shares her pain of discovering the remembered treasures of that environment replaced with cancer corridors from rampant oil refining.
Researching the development of engines and fuel, he finds that bio-fuel is not even a new concept. The engine now commonly associated with everything excessively dirty - the diesel engine - was originally designed specifically to be clean-running and to operate on vegetable oil. According to records and correspondence that Tickell shares, Rudolf Diesel's stated purpose was to provide a machine that was cheap to operate and would not harm the environment. Diesel's untimely and unexplained disappearance during an ocean voyage removed a threat to the oil industry - and the hint that Rockefeller was behind it at very least suggests it might prove illuminating to look into the research and information sources supporting the current spate of anti-biofuel stories.
Fields of Fuel blends history (including a provocative examination of the possible connection between Prohibition and oil industry fear of bio-fuel), chemistry, headline stories and a strong touch of Charles Kuralt in visits with people impacting and impacted by the research and development of fuel (gasoline and alternatives). Sequencing is logical and well-integrated, with none of the choppy didacticism of Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth. The film suffers toward the end from some repetitiveness, which may fault from the novice filmmaker being unwilling to edit out individual scenes or from his passion for the subject, and becomes unfortunately preachy in its closing minutes.
For those who applauded the intent of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth but were too overwhelmed to know where to start to make a change, Tickell offers more concrete everyman suggestions. The main one: Just start using bio-fuel.
Winner of the Audience Award for Documentary at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the Arizona Republic Bill Muller Award for Excellence in Screenwriting at the 2008 Sedona International Film Festival.
Image courtesy of Fields of Fuel. |
