No Impact Man: The Documentary

I first heard about the No Impact Man on the Colbert Report, so I found it funny when I watched the film that the first image you see is of The Colbert Report awning, and begins with his appearance on that show, then goes back 5 months to tell the whole story. With the influx of enviromental and green indivuals pieces that have gotten more popular in the last few years, I was a little skeptical of this project at first. However, I think it was a nice balance of 'big picture' and family photo. In short, Collin and his family took a vow to have no impact on the environment for an entire year - making no trash output, eating only natural food and flavors that came from within 250 of their home (in Manhattan), not using electricity, not using public transportation, not buying anything new, etc. Collin brought up the mantra of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and basically said, how much easier would it all be if we just could reduce our usage to none? Some say this is impossible, but you really just have to have the will.

Starting with showing all of the news coverge Collin's gotten and his television appearances and notoriety sets up the importance and success of his idea, instead of having the viewer feel like they're beginning with him and don't know the outcome. The combination of the intro and the fact that a three person family living in New York City is trying to go green (to the absolute extreme of the word) felt like a unique experience and story to be a part of as a viewer.

Right away the wife is introduced as a source of conflict (in terms of narrative). I was definitely rooting for her throughout, partly because marital conflict makes me uncomfortable, so I wanted her to participate and for them to get along, but also because I can see myself in her a bit, and I wanted to know that there was hope for people like us to change our ways. Collin is presented as an overly glorified savior of the enviroment (my opinion), and his wife is the average American consumer. This sets up a perfect mirco level struggle to play along with the bigger environmental themes that are emphasized. Often times I felt like she was unfairly picked on or portrayed, especially when they'd bring in the overly adorable toddler to take sides with the dad. That's not cool. But the wife did make a lot a progress, learned a lot, and was able to express herself throughout the process instead of going along with whatever Collin told her to. This was important because how Collin is portrayed makes the process look WAAAYY too easy. The wife is a good example of 'it's not easy, but there ARE things you can do to help, you can change your ways for the better even in small steps'.

Something that this documentary did well was create these amazing scenes within the scope of this larger project. That's something that Diane always stresses, is creating scenes and moments that are meaningful to the bigger picture, then building those together to tell the story. I really saw that apparent in this piece, as almost all of the small moments and scenes could've been short portraits or vignettes of this family. One of my favorites is shown in the picture above, and is where Collin has just thrown out all of their cosmetics and bathroom goods, and has made his own laundry detergent. Meanwhile the wife is in bed rolling her eyes and getting stressed out about losing all these things she's used to. Collin is doing the laundry in the bathtub and teaching his toddler how to wash the clothes by stepping on them. Finally the wife comes in to see what's going on and ends up rolling up her pants and getting in the tub with the rest of the family, the scene ending with Collin kissing his wife. SOOO cheesy and cutesy, but it really is a moment, and the film is full of great scenes like this. (There are a couple that are cheesy/cutesy and don't really add, such as the toddler learing about fireflies. Cute, but we get it, you have a cute daughter, let's move on.)

After watching this film, I'm not going to try to go no impact or anything, but it did shake me up a bit, especially in how I could relate to the wife about some things. We have the same weakness - clothes. She is a designer junkie, and I am far from that. Everything I buy is used or extremely inexpensive. However, I use that as the excuse for purchasing things WAY too often. This documentary made me very aware of how much STUFF I have. It's kind of painful. I need to follow her theory of 'inventory reduction'.
Overall, the doc was good. I learned a lot, and like the Characters. Check it out.