Development vs. environment.
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The Unforeseen
is a film for everyone with an interest in the interplay between the environment and development. It's a mesmerizing documentary that centers on the ambitions of one developer, Gary Bradley, and those who would oppose his will in Austin, Texas-a city that has much in common with our own.
Produced by Robert Redford, who also serves as an interview subject, and directed by Laura Dunn, whose last picture was 2000's
Green
, (a film about people who live along the banks of the Mississippi and who have unusually high rates of cancer),
The Unforeseen
, it would be sensible to assume, would feature an unfairly anti-development bias. But this assumption would be wrong.
Dunn's direction is decidedly not of the Michael Moore/Ben Stein School of Propaganda. Instead, she employs the best in journalistic investigative thoroughness and balance, merging her findings with a cinematic style that alternates between impressionistic, cinematic poetry-Ã la
Zoo
, and solid, straight-ahead uses of narrative and interview-as is found in the films of documentarian Alex Gibney (
Taxi to the Dark Side
).
Dunn begins with the developer, Bradley, a multi-generational Texan who grew up on a farm and who left the pastoral life for "a life I had more control over." Bradley, who envisions the earth as a blank canvas, becomes excessively wealthy. But after the savings and loan crisis (this section of the film is additionally edifying as to the hubris involved in today's subprime mortgage crisis) and a group of environmental protesters begin to derail his success,
The Unforeseen
tacks toward questions concerning what it really means to grow. As Redford eloquently puts it, "After that short-term profit evaporates, what's left besides a scar and a memory?"
Along the way we see how a group of concerned citizens united to battle the ***image1***powerful developer lobbyists and save their beloved Barton Springs. We also see how a group of humorously mustached, 10-gallon-hat-wearing Texans, toting signs with slogans such as "Birds Don't Pay Taxes," fought back for their own personal interests of "property rights" and, finally, what George W Bush's defeat of Ann Richards in Texas did to all the efforts the environmentalists had made along the way.
Dunn's storytelling strength is her ability to flush out details without losing sight of the bigger picture. And this bigger picture is one that we in Santa Fe would be advised to contemplate-and contemplate now. This sort of documentary can be a crystal ball that allows us to look into alternative futures and to learn from mistakes of the past. Could a little wisdom, foresight and encouraged imagination really hurt?