Mossville, a small, predominantly black community in Southwestern Louisiana, was founded by a freed slave in 1790. It endured through the Civil War, Jim Crow and industrialization to become a self-sustaining town of a few thousand residents in the 20th century. But in Alexander John Glustrom’s infuriating documentary, “Mossville: When Great Trees Fall,” it looks more like a ghost town.
Glustrom focuses on a single Mossville resident, a sort of accidental activist named Stacey Ryan. Ryan is first seen in somewhat straitened circumstances, looking less than healthy. It’s a shock when the movie flashes back a few years earlier to show a hardy-looking Ryan helping his son play tee ball.
What happened to him and his neighbors? That would be the energy and chemical company Sasol. Its local plant releases contaminants that over decades have made the surrounding environment toxic. And as Sasol’s facilities expanded, the company has tried to buy out town residents. But Ryan, a descendant of one of Mossville’s founders, won’t go.
Is this a case of environmental racism — that is, the disproportionate exposure of communities of color to pollutants as a consequence of structural inequality? As it turns out, Sasol is based in South Africa. Its very reason for being was to serve apartheid — creating one’s own fuels can be handy under other countries’ sanctions.
The movie travels to that country, where another black community is a sitting duck for Sasol’s emissions. This deepens the film’s argument, but too much of the movie remains insufficiently filled in. One wants to hear the higher-ups from Sasol try to justify themselves. The sub-90-minute run time isn’t an emblem of concision; the movie simply ends too soon.
Mossville: When Great Trees Fall
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 16 minutes. Watch on Maysles Documentary Center’s virtual cinema.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
