Ecology and *The Descendants*

Payne’s The Descendants (2011) has received almost universal critical acclaim as a family melodrama with comic elements and adaptation of the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings. George Clooney stars as Matt King, a middle-age Hawaiian lawyer who also runs a trust responsible for millions of dollars worth of untouched real estate that has been passed down to him and various cousins from his royal Hawaiian ancestors.

The film seems to center on his and his family’s responses to King’s wife’s (Patricia Hasty) severe head trauma during a boat race. Matt’s two daughters, Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (Amara Miller) confront their mother’s impending death with various outbursts, but as Matt attempts to get the family’s affairs in order, Alexandra reveals that his wife (her mother) had been having an affair. With his two daughters in tow, Matt sets off to confront the man who won his wife’s heart.

This traditional family plot, however, is complicated by the ecological message at the heart of the film. While dealing with his wife’s coma and infidelity, Matt King is also preparing to sell the family acreage and make millions for everyone in the trust, a deal that would turn thousands of pristine land into a tourist resort area complete with hotels and golf courses. As Joe Morenstern of the Wall Street Journal explains, “Descended from Hawaiian royalty on one side and haole missionaries on the other, Matt is a steward of sacred land, and he knows it.

Matt’s own voiceover provides further explanation:

The whole goddamned state is following my decision on who’s going to buy 35,000 acres on Kaua’i my family has owned since the 1860s. My cousins and I meet in six days to approve a buyer. Ever since my father died nine years ago, I’m the sole trustee, the controlling trustee, so I hold all the cards.

Matt’s cousins support his decision to sell the acreage and divide the proceeds, since they have already spent most of their trust money. Matt, on the other hand, has supported his family on his income as a real estate attorney. Now, however, he explains in another voiceover, he may be forced to sell the property or lose it in seven years:

My great-great-grandmother was Princess Margaret Ke’alohilani, one of the last direct descendants of King Kamehameha. She was originally supposed to marry her hanai brother, but she fell in love with her haole banker and estate manager, Edward King, whose parents were missionaries. Between his land deals and her huge inheritance, all of their descendants for generations have watched the past unfurl millions into our laps through leases and sales. Now the Rule Against Perpetuities is forcing us to dissolve the trust, and we’re selling the last parcel of undeveloped land.

This land trust and Matt’s struggle with his wife’s affair become entangled, however, when he discovers that her lover, Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard) is also a major part of the real estate deal he and the majority of his cousins support. Speer also serves as the motivation for Matt’s visit to his family property, providing him and his daughters with what may be a last look at the old Hawaii. Scottie even laments missing out on the camping trips Alexandra had shared with her parents on this pristine property.

For these reasons, Matt chooses the ecologically sound decision and refuses to sell the property, telling his cousin Hugh (Beau Bridges) that he has seven years to figure out a way to outsmart the Rule of Perpetuities. As he explains to Hugh in one of the few dialogue-driven pieces of exposition,

People will be relieved, Hugh, the whole state. I sign that document, it’s over. End of the line. Something that was ours to protect will be gone. Even though we’re haole as shit and go to private schools and clubs and can’t even speak pidgin, let alone Hawaiian, we still carry Hawaiian blood, and we’re still tied to this land. And our children are tied to this land. It’s a miracle that for whatever bullshit reason 150 years ago, we own this much of... paradise, but we do. And for whatever bullshit reason now, I’m the trustee. And I’m not signing. And if you sue me, it’ll only make us closer.

The decision also reconnects him and his family with their native Hawaiian past and with each other, perhaps demonstrating some of the benefits of maintaining our interconnected web with the natural world.

The City, The Sewers, The Underground: Reconstructing Urban Space in Film Noir

The City, The Sewers, The Underground: Reconstructing Urban Space in Film Noir

With a map of Los Angeles as its opening title card, He Walked by Night (1948) puts LA up front as its main character; “a bunch of suburbs in search of a city,” the voiceover claims. After opening aerial shots of Los Angeles, however, the setting opens up to include narrative, “a true story,” according to the narrator. With these opening shots and statements, He Walked by Night places film noir into the space of LA and of criminal history, a history based on an actual World War II veteran on a post-war crime spree in 1946 Los Angeles and of a filmic history that builds from gangster films of the 1920s and 30s to television procedural shows like Dragnet, which actually came as an after effect of the film. He Walked by Night fits well into criminal, cultural, and filmic history of the period and uses all three to demonstrate that the urban ecology above ground is a constructed rather than natural space, built on the storm drains and infrastructure (sewage and water systems, railways, gas, and lines for electricity, telegraphs and telephones) below it.

Produced a year later, The Third Man (1949), a British Noir response to WWII, begins with zither music and an extreme close-up of the instrument’s strings, but it too springs into images of the city almost immediately, this time of a war-torn Vienna. As in He Walked by Night, in The Third Man, a voiceover introduces the post-World War II context, as well as an American coming to Vienna after the war in search of a job. Although the film’s narrative builds fiction from a real-world cultural and historical context, it too shows us how sewers in Vienna help construct the damaged city above them. In fact, we argue that both He Walked by Night (1948) and The Third Man (1949) use what lies below the urban milieu—the underground and infrastructure—to demonstrate that the city and its inhabitants are constructed and culturally situated rather than natural or essential subjects.  

Underground rail systems play a big part in film noir. Subways, like the underground sewer and water drainage systems in other films, are first constructed and then reconstructed to serve the needs of the films’ protagonists. In Pickup on South Street (1953 Sam Fuller) and Dark City (1998 Alex Proyas), for example, a noir underworld becomes a literal underworld in scenes shot in a dark angled subway used primarily as a hiding place for protagonists and/or their enemies. In film, the underground serves as a cinematographic wonderland, an aesthetic as well as ecological space that serves both function and form for films noir like He Walked by Night and The Third Man.

Paul Schrader outlines stylistic elements that set film noir apart from the gangster films they replaced, focusing on techniques that show us that film noir “worked out its conflicts visually rather than thematically” so that “it was able to create artistic solutions to sociological problems” (226).   Schrader’s claim opens up film noir and its urban settings to readings that question the “natural” state of cities and their inhabitants in films like He Walked by Night and The Third Man. The underground sewers and drainage systems in Vienna and Los Angeles support Andrew Ross’s claim that the best way to confront emerging environmental crises is to advocate “an ecology that looks first and foremost at the task of social reorganization and cultural innovation for its cardinal principles” (271). To do this, we need first to acknowledge that the city and its inhabitants are products of society and culture, not natural givens. Films like He Walked by Night (1948) and The Third Man (1949) provide not only an acknowledgment but an explanation for such a construction.

He Walked by Night (1948) and The Third Man (1949) examine the idea of the city as a social and cultural construct. They also highlight how and why social, cultural and historical forces construct “gangsters,” not their genes. But what sets these films apart from other noir films is the attention they give to the urban infrastructure hidden below its progressive construction. By foregrounding sewers as constructions, escape routes, and seemingly safe havens for noir characters, He Walked by Night and The Third Man demystify what seem like givens and call into question the idea of the city as natural.  

If the city, its underground, and its inhabitants are “natural,” however, they are all “givens” that are unchangeable, except perhaps through evolution—a long-term process in which only “the fittest” survive, an argument Richard Dawkins and his so-called “selfish gene” theory would support. Instead, Andrew Ross suggests that “the only really sensible thing to do is to eschew this kind of attribution altogether, and look elsewhere, to local and culturally specific explanations, for existence of selfish and altruistic behaviors” (257). We agree with Ross’s contention. Characters in the noir films we examined adapt the underground sewers and drain pipes to serve their purposes—as constructed by their War and Post-War experiences.

An underground first seems to provide safety for post-war noir heroes in He Walked by Night (1949) and The Third Man (1949), as it did for civilians during World War II; it also serves as an ideal aesthetic space for post-World War II film noir. Adapting an already transformed concrete space into both an escape route and a quintessential noir setting, Roy and Lime seem to construct (or at least adapt to) a setting devoid of nature where lone anti-heroes escape the urban wilderness above them. Building on the already de-naturalized environment—a concrete covered river and valley in Los Angeles and a bombed-out and segmented version of Vienna—He Walked by Night and The Third Man suggest that in such an unnatural world, human nature also suffers. Instead of saving them, the sewers Roy and Lime reconstruct trap them and ultimately serve as their graves. Constructed as criminals seeking success after World War II, Roy and Lime meet the only fate an underworld and underworld culture can provide, especially in the noir world of the late 1940s cinema—death.

To Live and Ride in LA

To Live and Ride in LA (2010), directed by David Rowe, is a 55 minute blast through the streets, alleys, highways and even velodromes of Los Angeles. Clearly inspired by Stacy Peralta's 2001 documentary Dogtown and Z Boys, which focused on the skateboard subculture of Southern California in the 70's and 80's, To Live focuses on the fixed gear bikes(no brakes) pedaled by young men and women at high rates of speed to reinforce a cultural attitude that the city of cars is also the city of wheels and anywhere the mechanical, gas fired ones can go, so can bicycles. But bikes can go where no cars dare, except in fantasy films like The Italian Job.

This new subculture identifies itself by bonding through riding contests, parties, bike demos, blasting individually through four lane traffic during rush hour, and late night jaunts that sometimes leads to the "liberation" of private property (velodromes) for the athletic tests laid out for all willing participants. It is this group bonding that is featured and enforces the idea that the city as constructed is a multiple use arena. Concrete streets and asphalt roads can easily be adapted to new uses and these fixed gear hammerheads utilize their athletic skill sets to affirm that you can live and move through a major car metropolis with two wheels and leg power and nothing more. This is classic eco adaptation. Watching the bikers go down to the storm drains runoffs that have been used in so many Hollywood films in the past 60 years is just one more example of adaptation and evolutionary acquisition of space.

David Rowe's strategy also focuses on the beauty of biking in urban areas, sometimes dangerous, but always energetic. There is scant narrative description and the film has a great soundtrack of contempo needledrop music to reinforce the multiple camera work that captures the riders at speed from both the ground and the air. This is a film that moves with the speeding bikers, many of them former or current bike messengers, whose motto revolves around disdain for cars, lights and traffic laws. You can't ride hard, fast or win if you play by the rules created for cars, they seem to say, joyously oblivious to the facts that their bikes have laws governing their movements as well.

The LA we see is always sunny, the nights always balmy, the riders only impeded by their own limits. The weather conspires to increase speed and attitude. One rider, after a hard night of riding and partying, wakes up outside an apartment house, his faithful steed locked to his leg by his Kryptonite lock. It's biking in a semi Edenic environment. For us bike crazies who blew around cities like New York and Chicago, this is the biggest difference. These gearheads in LA can do it 24/7/365. Biking in 30 degree weather, with snow and ice on the ground and gray looming clouds, the threat of snowflakes blurring vision, northern city bikers must look at these blurs with envy. Sunny Southern California is a natural space for fixed gear bikes, because the film claims the weather always conspires to promote speed through leg power in a city that is always thought of as a culture of cars and endless traffic on highways that never end.

Bicycle cultures in big cities revolve around the notion that some form of freedom exists, beyond cars, public transportation, walking or running. Bicycles are also used for work, but here the film only focuses on play. This subculture has adapted their physical challenges to new athletic events. After one crazed night time race, covering many miles and ending up in a celebratory finish, the announcer crows that there is no Lance Armstrong here. No one famous or endorsed can risk their lives like these nighttime riders are willing to do and it is this behavior that establishes both their passion and their outsider label. They tag the city with their peddle powered speed.

Climate Change and Genre Film

The Last Winter (2006), Half-Life (2008), and The Thaw (2008) draw on elements of a variety of genres (science fiction, animation, eco-terrorism, action-adventure, to name a few). But all three films center on themes that are connected explicitly with warnings against the negative consequences of rapid climate change.

The Last Winter centers on the KIC Corporation’s attempts to drill oil in a melting Arctic. When the permafrost begins to thaw, an ice road to bring in oil drilling equipment becomes nearly impossible, but the melting permafrost also releases “sour gases” and either hallucinated or actual monsters that seem to fight against the company representatives’ exploitation of Alaskan resources, a battle that turns an eco-terrorism plot on its head. Instead of human actors destroying means of resource exploitation, the resources themselves intervene, attacking humanity with “sour gases” that may cause insanity and, perhaps, supernatural protectors of the Arctic that spring from ancient elements buried in melting permafrost.

 The narrative of The Last Winter highlights elements of the action-adventure genre in its scenes of human survival in spite of the harsh environment of the Antarctic.  But it also illustrates the pull of an eco-terrorism plot and the, perhaps, supernatural ramifications of humanity’s drive for resources, an environmental theme propelled by a mixed-genre fictional film.

Half-Life, on the other hand, centers on the coming-of-age stories of a precocious boy and his jaded sister, who use their imaginative powers to escape a confining home-life, save their self-destructive mother from her charmingly manipulative boyfriend, and finally reinvent their world in a mind bending conclusion. The film draws on multiple genres to fulfill this challenging conclusion, integrating animation and supernatural elements with generic expectations of the typical family melodrama.

This powerful family melodrama, however, literally parallels the troubling consequences of climate change surrounding them, global cataclysms from species extinction to tsunamis. In Half-Life, the destruction of the natural world is in direct relationship with the destruction of the family. The only escape is the creation of a new world that hybridizes approaches, a point illustrated by the ethnically ambiguous family members and their friends.

 The Thaw takes the most direct approach to climate change, highlighting some of the real consequences of melting Arctic ice. In The Thaw, melting permafrost does not cause insanity. Instead, it reveals a preserved mastodon carcass infested with a deadly parasite. The melting ice releases both the mastodon and its parasites, but the film moves beyond a traditional dramatic plotline and integrates both action-adventure and eco-terrorism elements to ramp up the tension. An environmentalist, for example, attempts to transport the parasites back to the mainland, so apathetic Westerners will be forced to react to repercussions of climate change.

Ultimately, all three of these films demonstrate the complexity of issues surrounding climate change. They also showcase the continuing influence of social, cultural, and political contexts on the feature film. 

*War Horse*: Environmental Film or Animal Rights Plea?

Steven Spielberg’s War Horse (2011), an epic anti-War drama confronting the fight for survival of a Devon horse named Joey in the no-man zones of World War I France, illustrates many of Spielberg’s recurring themes:  a character searching for meaning beyond himself, tension between a father and his son, and an optimistic vision of family and rural life. 

The film also addresses our relationship with the environment in a variety of ways, highlighting the interdependent relationships humanity shares with the natural world. It effectively illustrates the connections between human and nonhuman nature with its focus on the relationship between Joey and his owner’s son, Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine). The scenes before, during, and after battles also demonstrate the horrific consequences of modern warfare to people, animals, and the natural world, a devastating human and ecological disaster leaving clear evidence that, as the film tells us, “The war has taken everything from everyone.” 

But the film moves beyond more traditional disaster themes by illuminating everyday eco-disasters associated with our basic needs.  For example, Joey, a swift and strong thoroughbred, must prove he can plow a field for turnips to ensure the Narracott family maintains their shelter and the surrounding land that provides their food. When the turnip crop fails and war is declared, Albert’s father, Ted (Peter Mullan) sells the horse to the British army to pay the farm lease and, again, secure those basic needs. 

Because a father believes his family can survive only if he sells his son’s well-trained horse, Joey must endure horrific war journey that includes participating in traditional cavalry battles, and hauling heavy artillery for both British and German army brigades, a task that kills dozens of other horses seen piled in mass graves but proves Joey’s strength and, perhaps, demonstrates the film's attempts at an animal rights argument. 

This drive for basic needs and eco-disasters associated with them also includes humanity. Albert follows Joey into this warzone and nearly loses his sight. Despite racing across “no-man-zone” and trapping himself in rolls of barbed wire when a German officer sets him free, Joey and Albert are reunited, this time in a reunion that saves Joey’s life. 

In a romantic ending typical of a Spielberg film, Albert rides Joey across a field toward his family farm with a sun setting behind them. In the final scenes of the film, Albert and his father embrace, breaking the tension between them while Joey, swathed in a rosy sunset, seems to look on. In War Horse, Joey saves the family in multiple ways, then, moving beyond providing the basic physical needs we need to survive and providing a means to reunite a father and his son. War Horse, despite its stereotyped characters and overly sentimental plotline, effectively highlights humanity’s interdependent relationship with the natural world.