Writing at National Review Online, Peter Suderman has good things to say about Mine Your Own Business, which he saw at the controversial D.C. premiere two weeks ago.
After describing the "motley crew" of protesters that gathered outside the National Geographic theater that night and noting the manner in which environmentalist groups around the world collaborated in condemning MYOB as pornography comparable to Nazi propaganda, Suderman connects the dots that the opposition to MYOB has unwittingly provided:
The rhetorical overkill of the response was telling: The environmental movement is clearly afraid of this film, and it should be. Mine Your Own Business, Irish filmmaker Phelim McAleer’s clear-eyed look at the true impacts of mining and the nefarious tactics of its opponents, exposes the self-satisfied delusions of the environmental Left, putting lie to a host of deadly, anti-growth canards and revealing the smug elitism of many green advocates.This is, perhaps, not all that surprising. The ideas espoused by many greens are farcical enough to begin with. But even for someone used to their whoppers, it’s almost shocking the lies, misrepresentations, and condescending behavior that McAleer manages to catch on film. With great care and thoroughness, the movie deconstructs the Left’s anti-growth narrative of pastoral tranquility and replaces it with something truly shocking: actual local sentiment.
Suderman is impressed with McAleer's focus on local sentiment, which foregrounds the humanity and dignity of the very people environmental activists are inhumanly and disrespectfully presuming to speak for. That focus, Suderman observes, also forms the foundation of some very strong filmmaking: "Mine Your Own Business works in no small part because of its smart, thoughtful storytelling, its expertly edited juxtapositions of activist claims and local realities, and its strong characterizations," Suderman notes. "Nor is it burdened by any of the lazy boosterism that infects so much documentary filmmaking. Instead, it’s a compellingly rendered journalistic narrative that casts a skeptical eye on many of the dubious claims of the environmental Left."
That last is a crucial point. Though MYOB has been condemned as propaganda, those who are so condemning it are doing so because they hope to obscure the film's strong, ethical reporting. And strong, ethical reporting that challenges normative opinion, as MPI founder Thor Halvorssen noted at the D.C. premiere, really is obscene to those who aren't interested in the free exchange of ideas: "To people who are intolerantly devoted to their own views,” he said, “this is pornography--political pornography."