One of my favorite verses in the Bible is in Luke 9 when Jesus is described twice as having “his face set” to go to Jerusalem. It’s almost certainly a reference to Isaiah 50:7, part of the “Song of the Suffering Servant,” in which the singer says his face is “set like a flint” in opposition to suffering he is enduring. The image of Christ dead-set on his mission and the ambiguity concerning how he feels about it is captivating to me.
Whether he is looking forward to what is going to happen in Jerusalem or dreading it, Jesus is resolute. What follows this description of his demeanor are some of the harshest words Jesus ever speaks. He cuts everything to the quick. Either you’re in or you’re out, but this is no time to hem and haw. In Luke’s telling, it is during this resolute period that Jesus delivers The Lord’s Prayer. It is the version that ends with “Do not bring us to the time of trial.”
The young people in How to Blow Up a Pipeline have their faces “set like flint” to the task ahead of them as well. They aren’t going to turn over tables in the synagogue… well, actually they kind of are. They want to disrupt the economy so severely that society has to make drastic changes. Their proposed act of environmental activism—or industrial sabotage, depending on your persuasions—is a symbolic statement as much as it is an act of violence. They know people will call them “terrorists.” They don’t really care. They believe this will make a difference. They are willing to accept whatever happens to them as a result. They are resolute.
I suppose they are hopeful. There is hope in an act of desperation, after all, hope that by doing this thing, change might occur. It’s final hope, but it is hope nonetheless. The truly despondent do nothing.
Simply as a film, I love this movie. It is a steady, straightforward, procedural about how this group of twenty-somethings blowup this oil pipeline. It has 1970s paranoid thriller urgency. The actors are not familiar to me, and the style of the film is so direct, it has the feel of a documentary. There is a calling matter-of-factness about the whole affair. Even the flashbacks that sketch in the motivations of the characters are presented like separate chapters in a book – stories told without distraction that compound with the other stores to give the main narrative more gravity. The end is always in view, as it is for the characters themselves.
Their goal is distressing, but given the state of the environment, what they have suffered due to their proximity to the oil industry, and the prognostications of many environmental scientists, their actions are logical. I wish they had more hope of a better quality than this last-ditch-effort kind of hope, but no one has articulated that for them.
There is another verse that talks about Jesus’ suffering, why he endured it, and speaks of something being “set” – Hebrews 2, and it says that Christ endured the cross because of the joy set before him. When I think about that verse in Luke I love and the verse in Isaiah it references, I think about this verse too. Whatever Jesus felt about the trial before him, he was resolute in heading toward it because he kept always in view the joy of the reconciliation of all things to his Father. If we are going to face up the challenges before us due to changes in our natural environment, we need stories about the joy we stand to find on the other side if we make the necessary changes. I am grateful for How to Blow Up A Pipeline, which communicates so directly the desperation many young people feel about the environment. We need more stories about environmental hope too, more stories that set joy before us, or we’re going to get more stories like How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
One of my favorite verses in the Bible is in Luke 9 when Jesus is described twice as having “his face set” to go to Jerusalem. It’s almost certainly a reference to Isaiah 50:7, part of the “Song of the Suffering Servant,” in which the singer says his face is “set like a flint” in opposition to suffering he is enduring. The image of Christ dead-set on his mission and the ambiguity concerning how he feels about it is captivating to me.
Whether he is looking forward to what is going to happen in Jerusalem or dreading it, Jesus is resolute. What follows this description of his demeanor are some of the harshest words Jesus ever speaks. He cuts everything to the quick. Either you’re in or you’re out, but this is no time to hem and haw. In Luke’s telling, it is during this resolute period that Jesus delivers The Lord’s Prayer. It is the version that ends with “Do not bring us to the time of trial.”
The young people in How to Blow Up a Pipeline have their faces “set like flint” to the task ahead of them as well. They aren’t going to turn over tables in the synagogue… well, actually they kind of are. They want to disrupt the economy so severely that society has to make drastic changes. Their proposed act of environmental activism—or industrial sabotage, depending on your persuasions—is a symbolic statement as much as it is an act of violence. They know people will call them “terrorists.” They don’t really care. They believe this will make a difference. They are willing to accept whatever happens to them as a result. They are resolute.
I suppose they are hopeful. There is hope in an act of desperation, after all, hope that by doing this thing, change might occur. It’s final hope, but it is hope nonetheless. The truly despondent do nothing.
Simply as a film, I love this movie. It is a steady, straightforward, procedural about how this group of twenty-somethings blowup this oil pipeline. It has 1970s paranoid thriller urgency. The actors are not familiar to me, and the style of the film is so direct, it has the feel of a documentary. There is a calling matter-of-factness about the whole affair. Even the flashbacks that sketch in the motivations of the characters are presented like separate chapters in a book – stories told without distraction that compound with the other stores to give the main narrative more gravity. The end is always in view, as it is for the characters themselves.
Their goal is distressing, but given the state of the environment, what they have suffered due to their proximity to the oil industry, and the prognostications of many environmental scientists, their actions are logical. I wish they had more hope of a better quality than this last-ditch-effort kind of hope, but no one has articulated that for them.
There is another verse that talks about Jesus’ suffering, why he endured it, and speaks of something being “set” – Hebrews 2, and it says that Christ endured the cross because of the joy set before him. When I think about that verse in Luke I love and the verse in Isaiah it references, I think about this verse too. Whatever Jesus felt about the trial before him, he was resolute in heading toward it because he kept always in view the joy of the reconciliation of all things to his Father. If we are going to face up the challenges before us due to changes in our natural environment, we need stories about the joy we stand to find on the other side if we make the necessary changes. I am grateful for How to Blow Up A Pipeline, which communicates so directly the desperation many young people feel about the environment. We need more stories about environmental hope too, more stories that set joy before us, or we’re going to get more stories like How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
Elijah Davidson is Co-Director of Brehm Film and Senior Film Critic. Subscribe to Come & See, his weekly newsletter that guides you through the greatest films ever made, and find more of his work at elijahdavidson.com.
The Super Mario Bros Movie is a rollicking riff on one of video games’ longest running franchise (running, left to right across the screen, jumping occasionally).
