{"id":11372,"date":"2014-04-20T14:34:55","date_gmt":"2014-04-20T20:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/?p=11372"},"modified":"2025-02-15T07:54:11","modified_gmt":"2025-02-15T14:54:11","slug":"whose-side-are-you-on-a-review-of-wrenched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/whose-side-are-you-on-a-review-of-wrenched\/","title":{"rendered":"Whose side are you on? A Review of \u201cWrenched\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wrenched_slimdvdcoveronly_191\"Wrenched<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Feature Documentary | 92 mins. | USA<\/p>\n

Director: ML Lincoln<\/p>\n

According to \u201cWrenched,\u201d in the waning days of World War II young Edward Abbey was drafted and bound for Japan when news came of the Hiroshima bombing. Narrator Jack Loeffler states that this horrific event set off a lifetime of civil disobedience, agitation and environmental activism. While other sources have a different accounting of what sparked Abbey\u2019s anarchistic spirit, many consider him the inspiration for generations of ecowarriors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWrenched,\u201d from Director ML Lincoln, brings home the point that Abbey believed it was his duty to protect and defend the country against systematic destruction of its natural resources and monuments, particularly in the American Southwest. Over archival footage of power shovel destruction, \u201cThe land is too beautiful to be turned into an industrial waste dump,\u201d Abbey states; \u201cbulldozers tearing up a hillside are a kind of terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a film that points out the conflict between ecology versus moneyed interests \u2014 FBI versus agitators \u2014 environmentalists, river runners, writers, former park rangers, and well-known actors illuminate the commitment of the violent and the peaceful. Edward Abbey, devastated over the Colorado Plateau\u2019s decimation by industrial smoke and foul-smelling industrial waste, grew frustrated over the insensitive response of those who said the pollution: \u201csmelled like money;\u201d he moved away from passive writing to actively destroying property. Said actor and Oscar-winning Producer Robert Redford, who received threats over his views on coal and uranium mining related to Abbey\u2019s books and was concerned about what was happening in the American West, \u201cI think ‘The Monkey Wrench Gang’ signified all those dangers coming and this band of characters was going to do whatever they could to stop it from happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

While \u201cWrenched\u201d repeatedly makes its points, the viewer may sometimes wonder: Is the film about Abbey, who felt \u201ca rage about what was going on,\u201d or is it about climate activist Tim DeChristopher, who at the young age of eighteen read Abbey\u2019s \u201cThe Monkey Wrench Gang\u201d and mistook it for a how-to manual on getting himself arrested?<\/p>\n

In a recent Santa Fe Film Festival panel discussion, Oscar-winning documentary executive producer Andrea Meditch stated that a well-done documentary should have a good story versus being issue-driven. \u201cWrenched,\u201d for the most part, is a story about Edward Abbey\u2019s influence; but it sometimes wanders off course.<\/p>\n

On the whole, \u201cWrenched\u2019s\u201d filmmakers take a balanced approach to what some would consider violent or radical civil disobedience. Some will view the film as a \u201cradical blueprint for wrenching the system\u201d while others might see it as a story of a man who deeply cared about Mother Earth. The movie doesn\u2019t really ask the moviegoer to take a side, but it does provoke thought and suggest actions to be taken, no matter which side of social justice activities you might stand on. \u201cIf people don\u2019t know what\u2019s been lost, how can you care?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wrenched Feature Documentary | 92 mins. | USA Director: ML Lincoln According to \u201cWrenched,\u201d in the waning days of World War II young Edward Abbey was drafted and bound for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"festival_year":[],"class_list":["post-11372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11372"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19436,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11372\/revisions\/19436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11372"},{"taxonomy":"festival_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/festival_year?post=11372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}