Movie Review: "Night Moves"

Night Moves, Then Darkness Dawns

By Rainey Wetnight

“I’m not focused on big plans; I’m focused on small plans.” -Jackie Christianson, eco-filmmaker

Here’s a thought experiment: If you knew that according to science, marine biodiversity would be gone by the year 2048, what would you do? If you also knew that protests, online petitions, “Likes” on Facebook, and even environmental filmmaking wouldn’t catch most people’s lasting attention, how far would you go to get it? That’s the question three young people have to answer in Kelly Reichart’s Night Moves. Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) and Dena (Dakota Fanning) are organic farmers living at a cooperative which they and their fellow environmentalists call Nature’s Harvest. Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) is Josh’s brother, a former Marine trained in demolitions. These three seek to make their cause known with a bang, not a whimper.

The Green Peter Dam, on a certain unnamed river, prevents salmon from swimming upstream to spawn. They perish with their purpose as fish unachieved, and with no fish, the river’s ecosystem will collapse. Thus, so must the dam. All it takes is five hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, wires, a detonator, a timer, and an unassuming rich senior’s named speedboat - from where the film’s title comes. Early on, the eco-terrorist trio shows more remorse about destroying the boat than the dam. “Well, we don’t really give a [expletive] about longevity,” one of them comments with a rueful look in his eyes. They plan their attack so carefully, pondering each step with as much concentration as a chess grandmaster considers his moves. Nevertheless, even the smallest missteps can cause monumental repercussions.

The most tension-fraught scene in the whole film is not the one at the fertilizer store, but the one on the edge of the obsidian-colored reservoir where the gang plants their boat. They notice that on the opposite side, someone gets a flat tire and has to change it. Meanwhile, there’s only fifteen minutes left until ‘big dam go boom’. “That’s not a good spot,” Dena murmurs in a near-whisper. “No,” says Harmon. He returns to the loaded vessel, looks at the bomb timer, and waits. In the end, however, he must decide: Whose life is more important, especially in the long run? Is it worth turning back when so little will be changed?

Afterward, all of them believe that they’re - in fact, they are counting on - going back to normal, as if nothing happened. (Why is it that criminals in movies almost always think this, and then their conscience betrays them? Since the days of Dostoevsky, this has been true more often than not). What two of them realize too late is that nothing will ever seem normal again - eating dinner with one’s friends and family, working, listening to gossip, or even sorting vegetables for CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture). They’ve all worked so hard to support life through what they do, and in the end, they’re prepared to take it.

Half of this film’s excellence lies in its powerful nature shots: the dam being turned on in the morning and spilling an effervescent geyser into the reservoir, the reservoir itself under cover of darkness, the woods, and most powerfully, a forest of dead trees standing up in the middle of the river being dammed. This is the price we pay for our digital gadgets, our mass-produced food, and industrialization in general. Nothing comes without a cost, without sacrifice. Unfortunately, the trio here is prepared to sacrifice not only their own lives, but the lives of bystanders and strangers, to teach the world (or at least the locals) this lesson.

The question that haunts me at movie’s end is this: How much of an impact did they really have? As one of Josh and Dena’s coworkers mentions: “One dam? You’d have to blow up twelve dams to make a difference. I don’t call [what the perpetrators did] a point. I call that theater.” Real-life terrorists know that scale is crucial: the more people who die, the more attention they’ll get from the media and governments. What Dena, Josh and Harmon do is terrorism, yes, but it causes no widespread panic. Even though their crime makes the national news, there’s (oddly?) no nationwide manhunt. What they thought was a “big plan” ultimately turned out to be small potatoes, at least in terms of people’s response to their message.

My only other critique is that the ending of this film is so dull and anticlimactic that it will resound with a thud in viewers’ minds. None of their questions, or mine, will truly have been answered.

RAINEY’S RATING: 3½ STARS