“Forever chemicals” don’t die—they just regroup. Only instead of regrouping in hell, as the old Marine Corps adage goes, regrouping is happening in the oceans where such formations have been dumped for decades.
For years, Times environmental reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist Roseanne Xia has covered the legacy of the timeless chemical DDT, a pesticide that was once applied to people as harmlessly as hairspray and yard hose water. In 2020, she revealed that barrels of toxic DDT waste, last sent to the bottom of the ocean decades ago by its largest producer, Montrose, were closer to the shores of Southern California than previously thought. Her ongoing research work is now the subject of a documentary, Out of Sight, which Xia co-directed with Daniel Straub. (Full disclosure: it was produced by a subsidiary of LA Times Studios.)
The film follows Hsia herself as an intrepid fact-finder who wanders the blighted coastline, visiting scientists, oceanographers, biologists and wildlife experts as she tries to piece together the effects of half a million barrels of forgotten DDT, banned in 1972 but still affecting an already fragile ecosystem and the descendants of those exposed to it. Its inspiration, cited above and glimpsed in archival material, is Rachel Carson, whose seminal 1962 book Silent Spring sparked enough public outcry against chemical pesticides to lead to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Carson's inspiring alarm was, paradoxically, her absence, which could be seen in declining bird populations (hence the “silence” of her title). Meanwhile, Xia's clarion call begins with robotic images of leaking barrels on the ocean floor. This is the start of the sea-land food chain, which begins with marine life laden with DDT. Microplastics are currently a scourge, and rightly so, but we still don't know the causes of the chemical pollution catastrophe of the past era. It would be one thing if a company like Montrose, now defunct, once thought no one would notice their massive DDT waste disposal operation. It will be a different matter, the film argues, if we choose not to deal with the environmental consequences that are being felt today.
Out of Sight aims to be more cinematically alive than the standard documentary filled with talking heads. A brief history of DDT, from the corporate hype over its invention to the protests, is presented in a gorgeous archival split-screen montage taken from educational films, newsreels and interviews, but added as a cheeky touch to the Zombie song “I Don't Wanna Know.” And all of Xia's interviews are filmed in the field, vérité style, a tribute to journalism in action, from UC San Diego labs and mammal rescue operations treating cancer-stricken sea lions to microbiologist David Valentine's attempts to collect samples from those time-bomb-like sludge barrels.
While we need films that demystify journalism (and Xia is an engaging on-camera correspondent), that aspect is less interesting than an inspiring portrait of a dedicated, multi-pronged effort to expose, understand and hopefully eliminate a still-viable threat. Out of Sight doesn't have to be a stunning film to convey a valuable ongoing story about a hidden nightmare for us all. This brings to mind another famous quote by William Faulkner, as applicable to DDT's longevity as it is about the Marine Corps: “The past never dies—it's not even past.”
“Out of Sight”
No rating
Opening hours: 1 hour 34 minutes
I play: Opens Friday, November 21st at Laemmle NoHo 7.
