Collapse (2009)

Michael Ruppert, a man who once was a police officer with the LAPD but quit after seeing that the CIA was involved with the drugs trade, set himself a goal to investigate more issues, uncover them and publish them. He did this in his “Into the Wilderness” magazine. Chris Smith was planning to make a documentary about the involvement of the CIA in the drugs trade, but during the interview with Ruppert found out that he had more to tell. Things that were much more important. The end result is very interesting, but also quite unsettling.

During the movie we see a chain-smoking Ruppert (with some archive footage) talking about the world’s dependence on oil, its relationship with the financial system (he explains why the current crisis happened) and the future of the world population. He makes clear that there really are almost no alternatives for oil. You have to put more energy in making Bio-ethanol than you get out of it, electrical is no solution either, to build nuclear plants you need oil and windmills are only effective when their energy is used nearby. Even if we would want to use solar power we will still need oil for construction, transport and production.

Ruppert connects the dots between big issues. He shows a graph of the world population and how quickly it grew the last century because of oil. When the oil reserves have been depleted (which seems to be the case as even Saudi Arabia is drilling off shore), he predicts that people will die as well as there are insufficient alternatives to produce the same amount of food we are making now.
It’s a grim message and there is not a lot to do about it. He gives tips on how to survive this future, which are to learn to grow your own food and work together with friends and neighbours.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNmi49F_DIo]

This documentary is so captivating and at the same time so worrying that you will look differently at the world around you. I still have not bought seeds and gold, but you will consider doing it. I did not have the feeling that Ruppert is a “conspiracy theorist”. He tells things like they are, without sugar-coating it, and he does not care whether or not you agree with him. He has the knowledge to back up his claims and that makes it a very powerful message. If he’s right, the world might be very different from the one we are living in today. It will be even less peaceful and the future we see in movies like The Road might become reality.
This documentary is more thrilling and scarier than many horror movies. It’s a documentary everyone should see. Al Gore’s An inconvenient Truth (which I scored a 7) already had a very important message, but this one has more impact and shows an even more frightening future. Let’s hope that the hundredth monkey Ruppert is talking about will stand up after watching this movie.

Score: 10

Interested in other movies which I’ve awarded a 10?
A complete list can be found here.