For six months last year I worked in Austin, Texas. There were many things I didn't understand about the place. It has a vibrant live music scene and a semi-official slogan of "Keep Austin Weird" but I found it packed with freeways, office parks, and housing developments with no more than occasional patches of trees and grass. Many of the local people were very nice but, when you got to know them, defensive and depressed. Seeing The Unforeseen helps me to understand why.
The first part of the movie shows an initially successful community effort to stop a large upscale housing development that would destroy Barton Springs, an aquifer and natural pool. There are beautiful shots of it from the 1980s and 90s, combined with documentary footage of meetings and hearings about development permits. Unlike the villains in Michael Moore movies, developers and purchasers of the suburban homes are allowed to speak for themselves. They emerge as sympathetic people caught in a trap that makes a fetish of growth and home ownership regardless of their consequences.
Things change in Austin when George Bush becomes governor of Texas in 1995. His predecessor, Ann Richards, vetoed a pro-development measure that would have overridden environmental decisions made by the Austin City Council. Bush approves the bill with his now familiar smirk. The state legislature makes community action irrelevant and in a few years Barton Springs becomes a polluted ditch.
What's best about the film is its refusal to provide easy answers. Austin, like Dallas and Houston, has become a boom town, especially for makers of computer software. People come to Austin from all over the world and many of them make good money. They want to buy houses. Their employers want office space. It's inevitable that aggressive entrepreneurs will recognize opportunities and do everything they can to promote development. A question that the movie implicitly asks but does not directly answer is exactly what, under these circumstances, should be done.
Perhaps the answers remain unstated because they are hard for participants in a consumer society to accept. They may require a standard of living that places fewer conveniences at our fingertips, dwelling in apartment buildings rather than single-family homes, and riding municipal buses rather than cool cars. Most of all, social stability and preservation of the natural environment would need to be given higher priorities than economic opportunity and growth.
The biggest problem with The Unforeseen is its multiplicity of themes. First and foremost is the conflict between preservation of the natural environment and economic growth. Pictures of beautiful nature support this theme and are well executed. However, footage of a white-coated physician talking about blood capillaries and cancer cells results more in confusing similes than compelling metaphors. The recitation of a Wendell Berry poem about unforeseen consequences is nicely spoken but hardly relevant what happened to Barton Springs was foreseen. A shorter, simpler film might have better made its points.
The first part of the movie shows an initially successful community effort to stop a large upscale housing development that would destroy Barton Springs, an aquifer and natural pool. There are beautiful shots of it from the 1980s and 90s, combined with documentary footage of meetings and hearings about development permits. Unlike the villains in Michael Moore movies, developers and purchasers of the suburban homes are allowed to speak for themselves. They emerge as sympathetic people caught in a trap that makes a fetish of growth and home ownership regardless of their consequences.
Things change in Austin when George Bush becomes governor of Texas in 1995. His predecessor, Ann Richards, vetoed a pro-development measure that would have overridden environmental decisions made by the Austin City Council. Bush approves the bill with his now familiar smirk. The state legislature makes community action irrelevant and in a few years Barton Springs becomes a polluted ditch.
What's best about the film is its refusal to provide easy answers. Austin, like Dallas and Houston, has become a boom town, especially for makers of computer software. People come to Austin from all over the world and many of them make good money. They want to buy houses. Their employers want office space. It's inevitable that aggressive entrepreneurs will recognize opportunities and do everything they can to promote development. A question that the movie implicitly asks but does not directly answer is exactly what, under these circumstances, should be done.
Perhaps the answers remain unstated because they are hard for participants in a consumer society to accept. They may require a standard of living that places fewer conveniences at our fingertips, dwelling in apartment buildings rather than single-family homes, and riding municipal buses rather than cool cars. Most of all, social stability and preservation of the natural environment would need to be given higher priorities than economic opportunity and growth.
The biggest problem with The Unforeseen is its multiplicity of themes. First and foremost is the conflict between preservation of the natural environment and economic growth. Pictures of beautiful nature support this theme and are well executed. However, footage of a white-coated physician talking about blood capillaries and cancer cells results more in confusing similes than compelling metaphors. The recitation of a Wendell Berry poem about unforeseen consequences is nicely spoken but hardly relevant what happened to Barton Springs was foreseen. A shorter, simpler film might have better made its points.