Overview
How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022) is a film directed by Daniel Goldhaber and inspired by Andreas Malm’s nonfiction book of the same name. The film follows a group of anti-pipeline individuals who have, for varying reasons, become disillusioned with traditional activism surrounding the climate crisis. The group is assembled primarily by Xochitl, whose life has been so radically changed by the climate crisis that she sees direct action as the only way forward. Xochitl is joined by Theo, Alisha, Shawn, Dwayne, Michael, Rowan, and Logan. Xochitl easily recruits Theo, her childhood friend who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer as a result of the pollution where they live. Theo’s girlfriend, Alisha, is initially very skeptical of the plan, but joins after seeing how serious Theo is. Shawn meets Xochitl through the divestment movement and is pushed to join her after scrolling through social media and seeing the impending doom of climate change. Through his work on a movie about the pipeline, Shawn meets and recruits Dwayne, a Texan whose land was taken through eminent domain to build the pipeline. Through social media, the group recruits Michael, a self-taught bomb expert who lives on an Indigenous reservation in North Dakota. The last members of the group are Rowan and Logan, a couple from Oregon who had been in trouble with the law due to property damage they caused. To get off for the property damage, Rowan becomes an informant for the FBI, joining the group ostensibly to take it down from the inside. Until the very end, it is unclear what knowledge the other characters, including Logan, have of Rowan’s relationship to the FBI.
The film cuts between the process of recruitment and of blowing up the pipeline. The group meets up in an abandoned house in West Texas, near where the pipeline has been constructed. Dwayne leads the planning of the action, which includes three key locations: part of the pipeline buried under a few feet of soil, part of the pipeline exposed because of an abandoned coal mine underground, and the valve station where oil flow in the pipeline is controlled. At the house, the team works to create the explosives that they’ll place at the first two locations. Over alcohol, the group has a disjointed conversation about what they’re doing and how they’ll be perceived after the action. Finally, the time comes to place the explosives. The first placement goes over relatively easily, but at the second location, a faulty rope causes the barrel to fall and fracture Alisha’s leg. Rowan and Logan, prepared to shut off the oil at the source, encounter armed property inspectors. Logan distracts them and gets shot, but Rowan is successful in turning off the oil. The rest of the team is able to set off the explosives, and the plan as we were introduced to it is seemingly complete. Michael, Alisha, Shawn, and Dwayne quickly leave the area, while Rowan and Logan go to report to the waiting FBI agents. Theo and Xochitl return to their base camp, collecting evidence and dousing everything in gasoline. Rowan tells the FBI officers that the action was committed exclusively by herself, Theo, and Xochitl, and the police catch the other two at the house after it has blown up. They take full responsibility for the explosion, surrendering peacefully and accepting their long prison sentences. Theo dies of cancer while in prison, as the rest of the group reflects on their actions. At the very end of the film, it is implied that others have been inspired by the news around the explosion to take direct action.
Analysis
Through both imagery and dialogue, the film has an overtone of “placelessness.” Both oil and the climate crisis are “placeless” in that they cannot be understood from a localized perspective. Understanding either requires an imagination of what lies beyond one’s immediate view. While the oil is displaced, it is also placeless because its origins cannot be traced in the film. In contrast, climate change is placeless rather than displaced, because it is not necessarily tangible or traceable. The first introduction to placelessness comes with the characters themselves: the team members come from different parts of the U.S., but they all see the explosion of this pipeline as connected to their liberation from the form of climate change that impacts where they live.
An aspect of the film that might initially seem insignificant is when Dwayne explains that a portion of the pipeline is above ground because of an abandoned coal mine. Though this connection between coal and oil is not referred to for the rest of the movie, it helps to highlight the relative placelessness of oil. While the creation of coal and oil deposits is geologically similar, a key distinction between the two energy sources is their state of matter. Coal is highly localized; any coal-related extraction must be done where the coal is located, and its transportation has primarily been above ground. In contrast, oil is a fluid matter, and therefore requires less localized extraction. Oil under one’s feet can be extracted without their knowledge. Its fluidity allows oil to be transported through pipelines, which, as the film points out, can be easily turned on and off. The fluidity of oil helps illustrate this placelessness: it is never clear where exactly the oil comes from or where it is going. The focus is instead on the pipeline and the movement of the oil. The pipeline itself displaces people; Dwayne’s activism is informed by the seizure of his land, and he is troubled by his inability to continue his generational ownership of that land. While the people themselves have connections to place, the systems around them do not. The movement of oil forces the movement of people, too. Through its displacement, the oil serves to highlight the placelessness of the climate crisis and the extractive capitalist network responsible for it.
The pipeline and its oil are a symbol of an extractive capitalist system the team cannot directly touch. In their alcohol-fueled conversation, the team argues over how their action will impact the world, and Alisha states that this action will hurt people by driving up oil prices, uncomfortable with her teammates’ acceptance of what they see as collateral damage. Even though she agrees to go through with the action, Alisha is evidently plagued by the knowledge that it will primarily hurt marginalized people. In the end, Xochitl and Theo, marginalized people themselves, end up incarcerated. Through the last scene, the explosion’s importance seems to lie in its ability to reach and inspire others. The explosion of the pipeline is clearly a laborious action, yet it is relatively small in the face of the displaced and untouchable network of extractive capitalism that the film’s protagonists suffer from. The team comes together because they have seen and experienced the repercussions of the climate crisis existent across the country. All the climate damage the team has experienced cannot be traced back to this one pipeline in Western Texas, but extractive capitalism is so encompassing in its oppression that it cannot be struck in one singular place. The attack on the pipeline is an attempt to localize a global force; people from different places come together to directly touch the system in one location, knowing that it is so much greater.
Conclusion
Both oil and the climate crisis are reminders of the ever-increasing globalization of human life. Shawn’s decision to become involved with Xochitl was catalyzed by social media, which showed him the implications of climate change around the globe. Like and because of oil, human relations are fluid and delocalized. Each member of the team has their own history with and ideology around climate change, but from across the country they come together to participate in an action that they perceive as necessary. While on its face How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a straightforward heist movie, it highlights the complex relationships to place and people that have arisen through the prominence of extractive capitalism. To the characters, the best way to address and understand such a vast system is through localized action.
Bibliography
Goldhaber, Daniel, director. How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Neon, 2022.
