No Impact Man: English Movie
Cast And Crew
Directors:
Laura Gabbert Justin Schein
Genre:Documentary
Cast
Colin Beavan…Himself
Michelle Conlin…Herself
Release Date:4 September 2009
Reviews
Follow the Manhattan-based Beavan family as they abandon their high consumption 5th Avenue lifestyle and try to live a year while making no net environmental impact.
Proof that “eco” and “entertainment” aren’t mutually exclusive, “No Impact Man” may be a socially progressive, environmentally conscious film, but it goes down far easier than, say, an all-natural, fiber-enriched peanut butter sandwich without a glass of soy milk. It’s that rare doc (these days) that could go theatrical, largely because it’s a film about a couple, more than a movement. In fact, at the risk of causing domestic discord, this Laura Gabbert-Justin Schein film might have been called “No Impact Woman.”
Michelle Conlin is not the movie’s principal character – that would be her husband, Colin Beavan, whose goal is to spend one year leaving as small a carbon footprint as inhumanely possible. And he’s taking the family with him as he jumps over the crunchy, caffeine-less cliff.
Conlin doesn’t really want to go. Providing the humor and the skepticism, she becomes the audience’s stand-in as Beavan (who’s planning a book on the project) imposes a suddenly Spartan way of life on his daughter and wife — who really likes her Starbucks lattes and taxi cabs. “Daddy does nature,” she tells little Isabella, as their Greenwich Village apartment becomes home to compost eating worms and improvised refrigeration. “Mommy does retail.” When the couple carts all their unnecessary stuff to a thrift store, Conlin wants to buy the Marc Jacob handbag in the window.
But it’s Conlin who becomes the convert to the cause: While Beavan’s book brings his passion into question, Conlin really comes to believe in what they’re doing, despite such deprivations as no electricity, no out-of-season produce and, worst of all, no caffeine. As such, “No Impact Man,” becomes the best kind of propaganda, as well as a very entertaining movie.
Production values are fine, with Schein’s often on-the-fly camerawork a standout.
As a welcome and wonderful antidote to the paranoia about the terrorism associated with the date 9/11, Oscilloscope Pictures puts No Impact Man, a documentary about one New Yorker’s heroic efforts to test whether he could live for an entire year without making any negative environmental impact.
He is author Colin Beavan, a self-proclaimed recent convert to the environmental cause, who began his ‘No Impact Project’ and blog in November 2006.
The New York City-based Beavan left motorized transportation and elevators behind, along with the consumption of electricity, plastic throw aways and other non-recyclable material goods, and eschewed all but locally grown food stuffs.
The blog (well, yes, there must have been electricity use for that) took off and soon became a national obsession, a book was commissioned by Farrar, Straus, Giroux, and documentary filmmakers Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein started following the Beavan family for this film (more electicity consumed, I assume).
Beavan seemed to find his altered lifestyle to be manageable and sustainable — except that it wasn’t a turn of events that his wife, Michelle, had signed on for. So, the couple’s discussions concerning the sustainability of their relationship bring some high drama to the screen, but none of it has same sort of high impact effect you might expect of a documentary being released on 9/11, America’s terror anniversary.
Maybe Oscilloscope’s choice of release date for No Impact Man was made for other reasons– practical considerations such as theater availability usually pay a big part in these decisions — but the title No Impact Man seems to make really good sense for 9/11. No impact and a positive environmental theme. It opens in theaters in New York and Los Angeles, with a nationwide roll out to follow. Meanwhile, you can watch the trailer.
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