Review: Crude Independence (2009)

[Steve Rhodes]

CRUDE INDEPENDENCE
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes

RATING (0 TO ****):  ***

In CRUDE INDEPENDENCE, documentary director Noah Hutton explores what 
happens to a small farming community during a sudden oil boom.

Setting on top of the "Bakken Shale," the town of Stanley, North Dakota has 
been a small farming community ever since it was founded generations ago by 
Norwegian immigrants.  Unable to drill water wells, the immigrants were 
force to trek three or four miles to the closest stream in order to obtain 
water.  These immigrants lived a hardscrabble life, but, eventually, the 
town grew to the 1,300 people who are permanent residents today.  Proudly 
conservative, Christian folks, they are pure American heartland inhabitants.

Filmed at a time when gas was getting closer and closer to five dollars a 
gallon, as we witness the price signs on the local gas station being changed 
higher, the oil industry was eager to find more sources of domestic crude. 
With the advance in extraction technology and the rapidly rising oil prices 
to $147 a barrel, the land in and around Stanley was, for the first time, 
profitable to drill.

CRUDE INDEPENDENCE deserves an A -- no, make that an A+ -- for honesty and 
integrity, as it eschews the easy path of making one side or the other into 
villains.  In addition to the obvious potential for conflict between the 
roughnecks, who come to live temporarily in Stanley, and the farmers, there 
is also a distinct dichotomy between the land owners who had kept their 
mineral rights and those who had sold them, figuring that they'd never be 
worth much of anything anyway.

But the biggest surprise in CRUDE INDEPENDENCE becomes the movie's fatal 
flaw, a lack of demonstrable conflict.  There is very little tension 
discovered between the various groups.  The mayor remarks, almost 
matter-of-factly, that their police force has had to be beefed up by adding 
another officer, and the local sheriff says that the motels, the houses and 
the jails are full.  But the interviewers discover very little substantive 
disagreement among the various factions.

One woman who doesn't own the mineral rights under her land shows some 
resentment of those who do.  She says that some residents, who are in it 
only for the money, may become millionaires, and she could have, too, if 
money was all she cared about.

The roughnecks have only one worry on their minds, the inevitable bust that 
they fear will abruptly take away their income.  As they point out, they 
have to work non-stop even when it gets to forty or fifty below zero.  For 
this, they are well compensated.  Well compensated, that is, until the next 
time the oil price turns sharply lower.

(Now, of course, is that time, but the film was made when oil was predicted 
to be on its way to way north of $200 barrel with $500 a distinct 
possibility.  Ah, how things change.)

CRUDE INDEPENDENCE runs a quick 1:11.

The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival 
(www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25-March 8, 2009.

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