I would have sworn that “The Cove” had the Oscar sewn up for best documentary this year. But Joe Berlinger’s “Crude,” which opens next Wednesday (9.9.09), will be in the thick of the Oscar fight.

You’ve got to hand it to Berlinger for his even-handed work on “Crude,” a film that depicts immense sadness and stunning corporate villainy. Yet Berlinger offers a balanced look at the conflict. Chevron gets the chance to tell its story and Berlinger never pulls any sort of “gotcha” move on them. It’s just that the facts are so damning, even given the full-bore public-relations disinformation campaign by Chevron.

The story Berlinger tells is about the callously deadly and widespread despoiling of the Ecuadorian rain forest by Texaco – now owned by Chevron – and Chevron’s refusal to accept responsibility for it. It’s infuriating, at the least, to look at and listen to evidence – and listen to Chevron’s lawyers and spokespeople denying all the things they so obviously are guilty of.

But Berlinger tells the story calmly, carefully, offering both sides the opportunity to present a case. Yet it’s obvious to anyone with eyes that Chevron is being disingenuous about its culpability for massive environmental crimes. It’s just as obvious why Chevron is dead-set on tying the matter up in court until everyone involved has died of old age or the cancer caused by Chevron’s toxic legacy.

The film focuses on a lawsuit filed in 1993 in American courts on behalf of indigenous Ecuadorian tribes, charging that Texaco – now Chevron – had drilled for oil – and found it – in the Ecuadorian jungles. They took the oil – and left behind a patchwork of toxic dumps full of petrochemical sludge. They also dumped toxic wastewater into any convenient waterway – poisoning the source of clean water for tens of thousands of people.

The result has been an epidemic of cancer and virulent skin rashes among a population that has lived off the land and the river for hundreds of years. Chevron, of course, insists that there is no proof that the pervasive petrochemical pollution is connected to the oil fields and that even if proof exists, they can’t prove it’s Texaco’s fault.

Berlinger’s film picks up the trial as it moves to Ecuador – after Chevron got it moved out of American courts, in hopes of a more favorable hearing. He shows us scenes from a judicial inspection – part of the evidence-gathering segment of the trial – in which the judge, as well as the lead attorneys for each side, went into the jungle and inspected the sites. Even knee-deep in viscous sludge, the Chevron attorney employs a time-wasting defense of denial.

Fortunately for the tribes, they have one of their own – an impassioned young attorney who grew up in the oilfields named Pablo Fajardo. He’s not only smart and well-prepared, but he exudes a kind of moral strength and humility that can even withstand the celebrity flattery of Vanity Fair magazine or of Trudie (Mrs. Sting) Styler, who visits the region and adopts the cause as her own, spreading the word internationally.

You listen to the stories told by the indigenous residents – woeful accounts of not having clean water and being forced to drink and cook in poisoned water instead, of watching children waste away to cancer – and you can’t help but think: Here are people used to a subsistence living, which they took from nature. It wasn’t much but it was their life. So what can they do when some rich multinational corporation decides that profits are more important than these people’s right to live their lives unmolested?

“Crude” builds in power, a David-vs.-Goliath story that tells it like it is. It leaves you shaking your head at the naked power grab driven by social Darwinism, as well as the bravery of the men who stand up to it. It’s impossible to watch this film and not come away with a personal vow never to patronize the Chevron corporation again.

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