Nuclear living (and dying): Ivy Meeropol's INDIAN POINT examines New York's (in)famous nuclear facility

Something like this simply couldn't happen. Or so the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) told us -- before Japan's Fukushima disaster -- which, as I understand it, is ongoing still. In one scene toward the close of Ivy Meeropol's thoughtful and about as "fair" as possible (considering the whole-view circumstance regarding the use of nuclear energy) new documentary, INDIAN POINT, the filmmaker shows us a visual demonstrating the "reach" of the Fukushima disaster. Unless I didn't understand the map at hand, this continuing contamination has now spread around half the globe. Oh, but don't worry: Since this "couldn't happen," then clearly it is all just part of our imagination.

I don't mean to take lightly this whole nuclear threat. But, really, what else can you do but crack jokes -- and, sure, speak out -- when your government and its regulatory agency take the side of business over safety and refuse to regulate properly?  Ms Meeropol, shown at left, doesn't hammer home her points. In fact, she begins by introducing us to one of the workers at Indian Point, a supervisor who has been at the plant for over 30 years. He seems like a decent, honest guy who loves his job and is probably very good at it. But, or so we learn as the documentary unfolds, this is all based on a kind of "faith" in what we are told, rather than on any reality. If religion comes immediately to mind, that would seem quite appropriate.

And yet eight and one-half million people live within New York City and would be sitting ducks in the face of an Indian Point nuclear disaster (until last year, when he moved to Florida, TrustMovies was one of these), because the NRC offers no genuinely workable evacuation plan. A number of these New Yorkers, like me, are agnostics and atheists. They don't believe in any "god," yet they are quite willing to let this hopeful-if-crackpot faith guide them that, somehow, all will be well regarding the neighboring nuclear plant. If you want to live in New York City or one of its boroughs, Fukushima is the price you may eventually pay.

Or would pay, were it not for those activists, of which we see several in this 94-minute movie. To her credit, Ms Meeropol addresses not just the Indian Point issue but the entire issue of nuclear power and what it means -- from the amount of energy it provides compared to those of other sources (re Indian Point, the actual figure is ripe for reassessment) to what happens to the "spent" but still radioactive nuclear fuel. We meet the head of the company that owns Indian Point, as well as some of the folk who want to see the plant closed, as well as workers for the environmental group RiverKeeper, who give us what may turn out to be the key factor in closing this nuclear plant: what it is doing to the Hudson river water and fish that surround it.

The surprising hero (one of them, at least) of this movie turns out to be a fellow to whom we are introduced early on and who we are prepared to dislike. This would be Gregory Jaczko (above), the then-Chairman of the NRC, who might initially look like just another do-nothing apparatchik but who proves to be a strong campaigner for better safety. So of course he must be removed from his job, Ms Meeropol does not spend a whole lot of time on this, but from what she shows us it seems likely that a conspiracy to oust the guy succeeded in getting him to resign. Since his resignation, the woman who followed him into that office has also resigned. (I suspect an entire movie could be filmed around Jaczko, his career and philosophy. Maybe Corey Stoll could star in it.)

Slowly and quietly infuriating, as it presents everything from how aging nuclear plants begin to fall apart (the shaking tubes/pipes we see here will not inspired much confidence) to what is happening to that prehistoric-but-still-with-us fish, the Sturgeon, Indian Point should make its audiences think and think again about nuclear power as an answer -- or even an alternative -- to the world's energy needs.

From First Run Features, the documentary, a USA/Japan co-production, opens this Friday, July 8, at The Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center at Lincoln Center; on Thursday, July 21 in Hudson, New York, at Time & Space Limited; and at Laemmle's Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills on Friday, July 22. Elsewhere? Nothing scheduled as yet. But click here to keep abreast of any additional upcoming playdates, cities and theaters.

With NIGHT MOVES, Kelly Reichardt attempts a modern-day version of Crime and Punishment

With her new environmental-activist-or-is-it-eco-terrorist film, NIGHT MOVES, critical darling Kelly Reichardt has also given us a movie that can't help but hark back to the likes of Dostoyevsky and his Crime and Punshment. One of its stars, in fact, the ubiquitous Jesse Eisenberg, would make a great Raskolnikov (except that he's now already played him in this film). Reichardt's latest involves a plot to bomb a local dam (which we learn early on, so it's not much of a spoiler), its execution & aftermath.

Ms Reichardt (shown at right) -- who directs and sometimes, as here, co-writes with Jonathan Raymond -- continues to adhere to her slow-moving, minimalist, slight-on-the-exposition screenplay and direction. This has its merits (few of us seem to love heavy exposition) and its problems (it can lengthen a film, as here, past the point of what its content will bear). We learn only the barest minimum about any of our three bombers -- Eisenberg's character (below, left) is joined by a young woman (Dakota Fanning, center) and older man (Peter Sarsgaard, right).

A dribble of character info appears now and then -- she's maybe from a rich family, the older guy's a veteran -- but almost nothing about our lead character, played by Eisenberg, below, who begins the film glum and ends it even glummer.

Who is actually in charge here? We never learn this, though none of our three seem particularly bright or gifted in the eco-terrorism game. The Sarsgaard character, in particular, is constantly being proved wrong about stuff small and large, while Fanning's girl, below, though believing in crystals and other new-agey blather, seems to be the most direct, capable and action-oriented of the three.

Most surprisingly, no one appears to have considered the possibility of their act's having unintended consequences. Well, they're young and dumb, I suppose. But in terms of character, action and politics (the movie may appear apolitical, but it's all there, woven into the fabric of the story), there is finally so little on offer that you really must suspend your disbelief after awhile to tolerate the plot machinations.

That said, Reichardt does give us a suspenseful build-up to the bombing, even if the film is far too slow to qualify as a thriller. (Her most successful movie so far would be Wendy & Lucy, in which she wraps politics, economics, character, storytelling and our larger society into a moving and believable film.)

The scenes of "communal life" also seem a little deadening, unless that's the point the filmmaker hopes to bring home about folk who live outside the mainstream (I wouldn't imagine this to be her goal). But then, literally everyone/thing in this movie -- including the scenery -- seems inordinately glum.

The title of Night Moves -- not to be confused with the 1975 Arthur Penn film starring Gene Hackman --does double duty as a description of the goings-on and the name of the boat used to bomb the dam, arrives in New York City this Friday, May 30, from Cinedigm, where it will play the Angelika Film Center. In Los Angeles, look for it on June 6th at Laemmle's Noho 7.

Three diverse souls trying to save a world in Roshan's & Vaughan-Lee's ELEMENTAL

ELEMENTAL begins with a quote from T.S. Eliot, something to the effect that, by taking a risk, we learn just how far we can go. This new documentary then introduces us to three very different people, spread out around the globe -- in India, Australia and Canada -- intent on helping save our dying environment, each in his/her own special way.

Out of all the folk currently working to save our environment in countless different ways, how and why

filmmakers Gayatri Roshan (shown at right) and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee chose these particular three people seems to TrustMovies perhaps a little arbitrary. Ms Roshan is from India, as is her subject Rajendra Singh, who is intent on purifying (or at least cleaning up) the water of India's famous Ganges river. The movie begins, in fact, with spillage from a leather tanning factory polluting the Ganges.

Mr. Vaughan-Lee, the British filmmaker and musician/
composer shown at left, is the son of a Sufi mystic and has for some time been involved in projects to do with -- as is this one -- helping our world sustain itself.

This sustainability is also paramount in the minds of our three protagonists, the other two of whom include Eriel Tchekwie Deranger (shown below), a young woman of Native Canadian heritage, who -- via the Rainforest Action Network -- is fighting the Canadian Tar Sands development and the banks who are funding the project, and Jay Harman, a scientist/inventor from Australia who uses nature's own curling motion as a design to guide his projects into helping cool down the planet.

The work of Mr. Harman (the gentleman is shown below) proves the most exciting and unusual that the movie offers. We see a few of his projects, and each one -- dealing with the cleaning of water using that special spiral motion or with the movement of air and the possibility of removing pollution via nature's own special design -- seems not just possible but even probable.

The problem with the movie is that we just keep wanting more, but as soon as some thought or idea engages us -- wham: we're off to spend time with one of the other activists. This constant cutting between the three grows more tiresome and annoying as the movie proceeds because we're always left wanting more but getting less.

Why exactly has not Harman's projects taken off? The economic downturn, for one thing, but we come away from this film either suspicious or disappointed in how little we've really learned. While Ms Deranger proves the most interesting and accessible from the personal angle (she meets a very nice guy during her activism, and soon they are together and she's expecting, as shown below, his child), we keep learning just enough to want additional information. We're told that the Tar Sands project pits family against family and jobs against the environment (and is very much connected to our own proposed Keystone Pipeline)-- but the details that might better involve us are nowhere to be found.

Ditto Mr. Singh (below), whom we really learn the least about and who seems to flit from one place and project to another. At one point, the local people point out that so-called activists and government representatives come with promises but then leave without doing anything for the locals. What did Singh do in this particular place? We never learn the answer.

Both the film and its three interesting protagonists are worthy of our time, all right. But better use could have been made of that time. Any one of these activists and his/her work would easily fill up 90 minutes. Tossing them into a single film and then editing their information together into the shards seen here is not very edifying.

The oddly-titled Elemental, running 92 minutes, opens this coming Friday, May 17, in Manhattan at the Cinema Village, with a subsequent release planned for San Francisco, San Rafael, Portland, Bellingham, Austin and Washington DC -- with other cities to follow. The film is also available to bring to your city via tugg.