Crude: Must-See Documentary at the Varsity Through Thursday

The documentary Crude tells the story of a multi-million dollar lawsuit filed against Texaco by indigenous Ecuadoreans who claim that oil exploration destroyed their environment and gave them cancer.

A lifetime ago, I lived in Ecuador, on a oil exploitation site, for six months. I was not there to dig for oil; I was following spider monkeys as a field assistant on a primatologist's research project. The oil company's road provided access to the site.

By this time, the oil companies had largely cleaned up their act. Sure, sometimes the ground would steam from the heat of the oil pipeline running beneath it, but you didn't see the large scale dumping apparent in Crude, which is centered in the part of the Amazon that was still jungle 30 years ago, when American oil companies started drilling there.

They and subsequent exploration companies, including the government-run PetroEcuador, did not do a stellar job of cleaning up their mess, and now lawyers, indigenous rights activists, and documentary filmmakers and Sting's wife are involved.

Filmmaker Joe Berlinger doesn't editorialize. As in his previous documentaries, including Brother's Keeper (about two mentally-deficient brothers accused of murder) and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (about tension within the rock supergroup), he lets the principles of the story speak for themselves. Which is probably why his documentaries are the only ones I can stand.

Give Michael Moore this movie and he's showing up at Texaco HQ with a oil-slicked capybara. Berlinger shows us an indigenous Ecuadorean preparing to testify at the Texaco shareholders' meeting--but he also shows you a New York City lawyer writing the indigenous man's speech the night before.

The movie's most touching scene shows a indigenous woman who is trying to raise money for her teenage daughter's cancer treatment. She tries to raise chickens, but the chickens die from drinking the contaminated ground water--the water that she believes gave her daughter cancer in the first place. Mom cries from powerlessness and fear. You cry too, and silently vow to drive a lot less.

It's a fascinating story, going from court arguments in the rain in the middle of the jungle, to the slum-like home of the lead Ecuadorean lawyer, to conference room of an American law firm, to a Sting concert at Giants Stadium. None of these threads are superfluous, they are all part of the story--a story which, at its heart, is just a bunch of people who need clean water or they'll die.

• Crude is playing at the Varsity in the U District today through Thursday. Visit the completely stupid Landmark Theaters site for showtimes and tickets.