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Soak up some more eco-doom with 'Flow'

Rob Thomas  —  10/10/2008 5:51 am

Global warming. Two major wars. A financial meltdown. The chance that John McCain gets elected and then chokes on a pretzel.

Yeah, we really don't have enough to worry about these days. So why not grab a Pellegrino and see "Flow," Irena Salina's documentary about the end of the world's water supply as we know it?

Salina's grim, eco-apocalyptic film travels up and down many different waterways, from a river in upstate Michigan to the Ganges River in India. But it all trickles down to the same conclusion; Big multinational corporations are trying to turn water from an essential element that's free for everybody into a marketable commodity that they control.

In Third World nations, we see company men "privatize" the water supply that Third World peasants have been relying on, cleaning it up but also charging for its use. The peasants are so poor that they often take their chances with unsafe (but free) water, and serious diseases result.

Back home, the fight is over the Western world's love affair with bottled water, and the impact that huge bottling plants are having on the environment and the economy. In one sequence featuring magician Penn Jillette (which seems like it might be an outtake from his Showtime show "B.S.,") a phony restaurant in Los Angeles sells fake brands of bottled water to its patrons, who choose off the "water list." After showing diners rhapsodizing about the crisp, clean taste of their expensive aqua, the film cuts to the waiter filling the bottles from a garden hose out back.

That's a rare funny moment in a pretty sober film, full of talking heads like author William Marks ("The Holy Order of Water") preaching environmental cataclysm. As a piece of filmmaking, "Flow" is about on par with a good "Frontline" episode, and it's self-evidently a piece of activist filmmaking rather than a neutral piece. The film even closes with a request for viewers to help put pressure on the United Nations to make access to safe water a universal human right.

But Salina also focuses on grassroots efforts around the world to organize and fight the corporations, such as a spirited pushback by citizens in India against the multinationals. This helps "Flow" avoid the dispiriting trap that too many "sky is falling" docs fall into. The movie doesn't sugarcoat what bad shape the world is in if we don't change course, but it also shows that bands of dedicated citizens can have a positive impact on changing that course. I'll drink to that.

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FLOW

Three stars

Stars: Penn Jillette, William Marks

Rated: Not rated

How long: 1:23

Where: Sundance

For fans of: "An Inconvenient Truth," "The Unforeseen," tap water

Rob Thomas  —  10/10/2008 5:51 am