Review: NO IMPACT MAN

Michelle Conlin is a Manhattan-based material girl of the highest order, a born shopper with expensive tastes (she’s just paid $975 for a pair of designer boots), and a senior writer at the magazine “Business Week�. Her husband is Colin Beaven, a “guilty liberal� who takes his social and environmental responsibilities way too seriously and lives by the adage “What Would Al Gore Do?�. In 2006, Beaven convinced his wife that they should live one year leaving the smallest “carbon footprint� possible so they gave up electricity, non-local foods, elevators, cleaning products, gas-powered transportation, toilet paper (!), and basically all worldly pleasures that make life enjoyable. Documentarians Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein followed the couple (and their 1-year old daughter) with their cameras throughout their year of sacrifice and the result is the uneven but interesting new documentary THE NO IMPACT MAN.

Colin Beaven’s goal (in addition to making the world a better place of course) is to write a book about this experience titled “The No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process� timed to be released in conjunction with this documentary. It seems like a self-promoting stunt, and it certainly is. Fortunately the filmmakers seems to be aware that Beaven comes off as an irritating weenie and as the documentary progresses, the filmmakers focus more and more attention on Michelle’s point of view. This is a wise move because it makes the film more accessible as her story and her perspective are much more interesting than his and 90 minutes with Beaven alone would have been insufferable. It’s a thin premise to hang a feature-length documentary on and the most entertaining aspects of THE NO IMPACT MAN is the absurd humor in the scenes illustrating Beaven’s ineptness and hypocrisy and watching Michelle bend the rules. Beavan doesn’t understand why his tiny worm-filled compost bin attracts flies and he explains in great detail how his organic clay-pot refrigerator is going to work (problem is, it doesn’t!). He sets out some solar panels but just enough to power his laptop so he can keep blogging about his experience. Meanwhile, Michelle is sneaking over to her neighbor’s apartment to borrow some ice.

Despite the politics inherent in it’s subject, THE NO IMPACT MAN is surprisingly agenda-free in terms of technique. It’s presented as a true “fly-on-the-wallâ€� documentary and lets its audience decide themselves whether to idealize or deride Beavan. It’s also style-free and does a poor job illustrating how much time has passed and there are just too many dull scenes. It fails to explain Beavan’s background and why we should care about who he is or where his journey takes him. Only about a half hour in, did I even realize he was a published author who was writing a new book (turns out Beavan had written a book on D-Day and another on forensic science). Is Beaven a principled, long-time environmental activist or is he just doing this to sell his book? The question goes unanswered although at one point Beaven claims he’s doing it because he’s a “good liberalâ€� and he considers his undertaking heroic (that settles it then!). Beavan’s cause may be noble, but it quickly becomes tiresome watching him gush about all the attention he’s receiving and worrying about his own media image. The movie opens with him nervously rehearsing for an appearance on “The Colbert Reportâ€� and we also follow him doing “Good Morning Americaâ€� as well. His efforts attracted a whole lot of media attention that led to some angry criticism even from folks inside the established environmental community and he frets when he’s profiled condescendingly in the “New York Timesâ€� style section. Beavan seems to have no sense of irony and never addresses the paradox of all the trees that will be used to print his book (You’d think the book would be available on a wireless Kindle device but it’s not) and all the cars that will pollute their way to theatres to see his movie. It appears that Michelle’s job is what puts them in a position to attempt the privileged lifestyle experiment that is THE NO IMPACT MAN and, as a voice of reason, she makes for a sympathetic audience surrogate. She goes along with an open mind at first and seems to enjoy playing cards by candlelight and bicycling through Times Square to work. But her stress soon becomes apparent as she has trouble adjusting to this new lifestyle and begins to wonder if it is all worth it. Their story takes an uncomfortable turn late in the film when Michelle decides that this is the year to have a second child (the year where the cameras are constantly following them). This leads to some uncomfortably voyeuristic scenes of domestic tension and heartache (Beaven actually has the nerve to call her desire “selfishâ€�). There is a fiction-feature adaptation of THE NO IMPACT MAN in development and Hollywood would be smart to tell the story through Michelle’s eyes as it would be a great role for any actress. It’s a testament to the strength of their marriage that this experiment does not pull them apart but actually seems to bring them closer together and if Michelle Conlin and Colin Beaven can find a deeper kind of meaning in it all, more power to them.