Film Review: BP Spill Aftermath Exposed in Humanizing Doc ‘The Great Invisible’

Submitted by NickHC on November 6, 2014 - 11:17am

CHICAGO – Four years later, and the change that lamentably only comes from the casualties of life and livelihood has not reached the Gulf of Mexico. Director Margaret Brown’s documentary compassionately bestows a disillusioned voice to the affected individuals, from oil riggers to oyster shuckers, whose reliance on the gulf’s livelihood was devastated when BP spilled a total of 176 million gallons of oil over 87 days starting on April 20, 2010.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

One perspective begins with a home video. Lead oil rigger Doug Brown shares with “The Great Invisible’s” viewers the informal footage he made inside the “Titanic”-like rig Deepwater Horizon, before its explosion killed eleven men and caused the devastating spill (the rig was owned by Transocean, and then leased by BP). Brown and others (like Stephen Stone, who still has his lifejacket) provide their during-and-after stories of survival, which have now become epilogues of bare compassion from their employers, and post-traumatic stress.

In Bayou La Batre, Alabama, a different point-of-view is provided, of the seafood workers whose livelihood came from the livestock in the water. Brown angles this through optimism and humanity, following around volunteer Roosevelt as he drives around donated food. Concurrently functioning as Brown’s tour guide to the lost communities with out-of-work shuckers and fishers, Roosevelt treats victims with the attitude that is missing from the companies that spared checks soon after the events, with support that quickly dissipated thereafter.

“The Great Invisible” opens at Chicago’s Music Box Theater on November 7, 2014. A documentary directed by Margaret Brown. Rated “PG-13”