HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE: Adapting A Manifesto Proves Challenging

After a long day of prepping explosive materials, the motley crew of young adults in How to Blow Up a Pipeline sit around a campfire. “I’ve got a blunt?” one offers. “I’ve got some handles in the car?” adds another. It’s part consciousness-raising session, part slumber party. The earlier bomb making scenes are both deeply stressful and strangely satisfying as they revel in the aesthetic details of the process, like Breaking Bad with kids’ chemistry sets. These passages encapsulate the pleasures (and limits thereof) of this tense, independent thriller, picked up by Neon after its award-winning premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. By day, the gang uses employee discounts to buy fuses and gasoline. By night, they get drunk and discuss the merits of “sabotage” (felony-level destruction of property that doesn’t kill anyone) in light of the existential threat of climate change, arguing among themselves about the political semantics of terrorism: “MLK was considered a terrorist” one points out, “Jesus was a terrorist!” another crows. 

Tension as Ulterior Motives

The film, directed by Daniel Goldhaber (Cam), follows eight young people from across the country as they prepare to (you guessed it) blow up parts of an oil pipeline in West Texas. As they put their plan into action, flashbacks fill in each one’s personal, traumatic relationship to climate change and to each other, building tension as ulterior motives and internal conflicts are revealed–– providing some already-loaded set pieces with an additional punch of adrenaline. The dynamics of the ragtag ensemble are fascinating to watch, enlivened by fun performances, particularly from Sasha Lane as a hard drinking bad-boy with nothing to lose and Lukas Gage as a scenery-chewing anarcho-frat boy. In style, the film’s softly lit vistas and dusty interiors feel comfortably familiar, reminiscent of recent Western dramas from Hell or High Water to Nomadland, but the tension the film brings to its material is uniquely urgent – perhaps for its take on the subject matter. How to Blow Up a Pipeline addresses climate catastrophe from the perspective of a generation intimately and agonizingly familiar with its presence, who take its gravity for granted. 

Based on a nonfiction manifesto of the same name, How to Blow Up a Pipeline was inspired by “climate change panic attacks”  according to Ariela Barer, one of its writers, producers, and stars. This makes sense: that passion, rage, and anxiety, undergirded by the morally unambiguous framing of the film’s source material, makes the film relatively singular among recent films about eco-terrorism (one character’s take on the phrase: “If the American empire calls us terrorists we’re doing something right”). Unlike earlier thrillers in the subgenre like Night Moves or The East (both 2013), also about twentysomethings taking violent retribution on corporations and the American government for their roles in destroying the environment, here the characters’ earnest self-righteousness is celebrated rather than presented as misguided or ultimately untenable, better suited to nonviolent action. That’s not to say no one questions their choices – friends and relatives do, and often. That being said, the film ultimately presents the group as being both justified and effective in a way that stands out. Additionally, unlike Paul Schraeder‘s darkly surreal First Reformed (2017) – which follows a priest’s agonized journey down the rabbit hole and into an explosive vest – here, the road to radicalization is uncluttered by uncertainty. The filmmakers hammer in ad nauseum the characters’ ardent faith in their cause through depictions of the unrelenting and deeply personal impact of pollution and extreme weather on their lives. 

Conclusion:

The film’s pleasures are also at times its limitations: adapting a thriller from a manifesto proves challenging, and the film’s effective tension is often sapped by didactic dialogue, weighing down an otherwise churning pace. Similarly, providing each character with a clear, obvious “tragic backstory” to motivate their hatred of climate change risks oversimplifying the pervasive climate anxiety of young people today. Ironically, climate change seems like less of an existential threat when it’s being presented like the Joker killing Bruce Wayne’s parents in an alley, an issue jokes about “superhero origin stories” can’t paper over. This is a movie called How to Blow Up a Pipeline based on a book called How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Simply put, its joys lie in the blunt simplicity and tension of watching passionate, political young people, well, blowing up a pipeline. Its drawbacks, too, are in the translation: While there’s a charming contrast in seeing Tyler from Euphoria and Star from American Honey do domestic terrorism, its occasionally pedantic approach to its ideology can at times bog down the visceral pleasures of the process. 

How to Blow Up A Pipeline was released on April 7, 2023!

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