Go Further Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)November 10th, 2004
GO FURTHER
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Abramorama
Grade: B
Directed by: Ron Mann
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Ken Kesey, Steve Clark, Joe Hickey, Tom Ballanco, Renee Loux Underkoffler, Jessica Chung, Joe Lewis, Sonia Farrell, Laura Louie
Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 11/9/04
During the final credits of Ron Mann's documentary, "Go Further" you'll see a note "No hippies harmed in the making of this film." Some folks, especially from the red states and most particularly from corporations and their workers who make a living by despoiling the environment, will snap their fingers and mutter "Darn!" In fact actor-activist Woody Harrelson and his merry band of hempsters are like Michael Moore: they present only one side of the issue they're hawking, ignoring the numbers of people who will lose their employment if Harrelson's ideas ever got put into practice. Nor does director Mann get into the concept that only a small percentage of American people can be fed through organic farming.
That said, much of what Harrelson's group are doing is for the good, educating the public about how the environment is being ruined by over-use of oil for energy, trees for paper, and genetically modified seeds for crops. The film is based on a trip that Harrelson and company took on a bus colorfully painted with trees, the sun and the landscape, talking to packed houses on the Pacific route from Oregon to Southern California. The bus is bio-fueled, allegedly on hemp, but no details are given us as to how hemp can fuel a vehicle and to what extent hemp can be used by some hundred million cars on the American roads today. Also they're preaching to the choir, talking at colleges in perhaps America's most liberal cities, Berkeley, California and Eugene, Oregon. Still, there may be people in the movie audience who will be enlightened but even there, you're like to be targeted only those who are already hip to environmental concerns.
As the bus proceeds south, the doc–which thankfully is anything but a talking-heads bore–runs into a selection of colorful people, because that's what road movie are all about. There's a guy who sells worm tea, and discusses how the thousands of worms on his organic farm reproduce like bunnies and fertilize the soil. A band is recruited, the electric guitar given its power by people riding stationary bicycles. A solar power designer tells us that Cuba has powered all of its schools by use of the sun.
Alas, the green days of the late 1960s and early seventies are no longer with us, but watching this film brings back memories of the folk music of groups like The Weavers that dominated the times, with a few goofy tunes to match the goofiness of the road trip. Ultimately Woody tells us that change begins with personal transformations. It's important that people give up red meat and chicken and should even shuck milk which is filled with blood and pus–a comment that gets the PETA seal of approval. However no mention is made at all about hybrid cars, the use of which could conceivably cut a great deal of air pollution while shucking America's dependency on the Gulf for its oil imports. A chap named Steve Clark, an immature 30-year-old, is the comic center of the pic, a fellow who is a born-again champion of organics who begins the tour by smoking Marlboros and eating Snickers and ends with a taste for organic produce.
Not Rated. 80 minutes. © 2004 by Harvey Karten
@harveycritic.com
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