Reviews
Excerpts from reviews of The Unforeseen.
Observing locally and thinking globally, Laura Dunn’s astonishing debut doc feature “The Unforeseen” is the kind of transformative viewing experience that has made the current period a golden age for nonfiction film. Pic takes the history and battles over development and sprawl in Austin, Texas, and launches into a visual, scientific and philosophic rumination of humanity’s place on the planet and the limits to growth…
As a cinematic contemplation of human activity on the planet, it far surpasses “An Inconvenient Truth” and its more lecture-like message on global warming.
Robert Koehler
“Commissioned by Malick, director Laura Dunn details a truly engrossing account of the opposition of local residents to a series of proposed suburban subdivision developments in Austin, Texas in the late Eighties and early Nineties. What’s at stake in this instance is the impact these developments will have on water quality in general and on a beloved local spring in particular. But the film ultimately succeeds in having a paradigmatic reach, not least because of the pivotal role newly elected Texas governor George Bush plays in the final chapter of this story. Deploying motion graphics and aerial photography to increasingly mesmerizing effect, and adopting what can only be described as a lyrical approach, Dunn interweaves this gripping narrative of political resistance with the personal story of one of the development’s prime movers, a now-bankrupt real-estate whiz kid whose surprisingly self-reflective interview allows the film to transcend its specifics and finally attain an almost metaphysical realm.
Best film of the festival, hands down. “
Gavin Smith, Film Comment
“The 2007 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival unearths hope and horror from the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague, Israeli prisons, Eastern Congo, the slums of Guatemala, the racist South, Pinochet’s Chile, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Darfur, Belarus, Afghanistan, and (surprise, surprise) Iraq. But it is in Austin, Texas, that this fiercely committed festival locates its imaginative epicenter. Water flows from a 100-million-year-old limestone aquifer into the city of Austin, where it collects in the Barton Springs Pool, a recreational reservoir enjoyed by a population of unusually progressive Texans. Their efforts to save the springs from suburban development provide an initial strata of information in The Unforeseen, an ingeniously scaled, unusually resonant documentary by Laura Dunn…
Talking heads and archival footage are the factual foundation above which rises a soaring, intricate lyricism. This is a matter of dreamy, drifting, rather indulgent, high-definition nature imagery, which bears kinship to the work of executive producer Terrence Malick, as well as a carefully engineered poetics of data.”
Nathan Lee, Village Voice covering the Human Rights Watch Film Festival
“The best, and the least ballyhooed, of the recent wave of “green” documentaries, Dunn’s debut feature contains neither computer-simulations of the earth’s imminent destruction nor the appearance of a celebrity host/narrator to share his own fervent environmentalism. But fret not: Robert Redford (who also executive produced) pops up, as if he were just another talking head, to reminisce about the clear, cool Austin creek he learned to swim in as a boy—the continued existence of which has been endangered by two decades of rapid urban expansion.
Redford’s involvement may be partly responsible for the relatively low profile The Unforeseen had at Sundance this year, where it was presented in the non-competitive American Spectrum sidebar and attended to by relatively little buzz. But any concerns about potential conflicts of interest are rendered irrelevant by Dunn’s clear-eyed intelligence. Rather than taking the whole world as her subject, she has narrowed her focus to one city on one small corner of the planet and shown how, despite the best efforts of environmentalists, urban sprawl has grown there like a cancer.”
Scott Foundas, Village Voice, covering Sundance BAM
It’s a beautiful, soulful work about real estate development and sprawl, focused on Austin’s beloved Barton Springs, and if you think that’s impossible you haven’t seen it.
Dunn never pretends to be a neutral party (no one has yet made a documentary that’s pro-sprawl, as far as I know) but she presents developer Gary Bradley, a perennial villain to the Austin left, as a human being with admirable drive and complicated motivations. Most of Dunn’s interviewees and sources — including Willie Nelson, poet Wendell Berry, the late Ann Richards and Redford himself — come down on the other side, of course, and the governing mood is of both anger and lamentation. “The Unforeseen” is less an issue-driven documentary than a pure visual and sensual experience that seeks to capture the mystery of the American landscape, both paved and wild. Its themes aren’t easy to summarize and its questions defy easy answers.
Andrew O’Hehir, Salon
In her four-years-in-the-making documentary “The Unforeseen,” filmmaker Laura Dunn combines interviews with archival footage and animated graphics in order to chronicle the struggle between preserving our environment and protecting the rights of individuals to pursue their dreams. Although Dunn focuses on the particular situation as it has unfolded in Austin, the film is universal, working as a microcosmic model of similar struggles taking place all over the country… Dunn does an incredible job of condensing this extremely complex battle into a story that is simple and understandable, as well as extremely compelling.
Sally Foster, Film Threat
“[a] mesmeric masterpiece. Its specific subject couldn’t be more prosaic: environmental regulations impacting real estate development in Austin, Texas; particularly one project that threatened the beloved Barton Springs community swimming hole. Within this narrow spectrum, Dunn’s supple and graceful narrative ropes in a tremendous amount, painting a portrait of a nation greedily gobbling up its open space at a virus-like speed, leaving behind a wrecked landscape of unforeseen consequences… Visually it’s close to incomparable, as Dunn’s camera (floating underwater, hovering over horizon-reaching subdivisions, trawling past endless construction acreage) has behind it an instinctual understanding of the terrifying beauty of nature — those who see hints of Terrence Malick in these images will not be shocked to see him listed as producer. But there’s also a powerful political statement here about halting the reckless spread of concrete across the land, for the sake of our species if nothing else.
**** 1/2 Stars
Chris Barsanti, Filmcritic.com
(Full Review)
What is utterly Unforeseen in this documentary is how powerfully poetic this debut from Laura Dunn, whose big-name backers include executive producers Terrence Malick and Robert Redford, is—literally. The aerial shot of the rapidly rising steel skeleton of the Frost Bank Tower in Austin that opens The Unforeseen—the ominous manner in which it looms over the Texas Capitol an all-too-telling illustration of the relative roles of commerce and democracy in modern-day land development—is accompanied by Wendell Berry’s rich reading of his “Santa Clara Valley,” the poem that inspired the film’s title.
Boxoffice.com
My favorite documentary at AFI FEST turned out to be one I had initially passed on. The Unforeseen was described in the catalogue as “the story of how big developers spoiled a city treasure, and about the consequences continued development has on us all,” which didn’t exactly sound like cinematic gold. But after talking with critic Robert Koehler, who assured me that I couldn’t miss it, I did some last-minute rearranging and was very glad I did.
On executive producer Terrence Malick’s initiative, filmmaker Laura Dunn has crafted a rare entry in environmentally or socially conscious documentaries of late–a movie bristling with information but also with significant formal beauty. Its juxtaposition of facts, figures, and interviews with aerial and underwater imagery, along with Wendell Berry’s poem “Santa Clara Valley” (narrated by the author himself), provides a multilayered examination of what it means for society to “develop” and “grow” while depleting its natural resources.
Doug Cummings, Film Journey
(Full Review)
“Speaking of weird hybrids, American director Laura Dunn’s The Unforeseen (*****) answers the question “what if Robert Redford and Terence Malick had an HD baby?” Both men have producer credits on this focused yet expansive documentary, which examines the furor over proposed property developments in an extra-liberal section of Austin, Texas, in the early 1990s. A grassroots campaign to protect a community-sustaining hot spring from predatory builders proved successful until a certain rough, smirking beast slouched into the governor’s office and turned the tide.
There’s more to it than anti-Bush sabre rattling, however. The Unforeseen is the rare doc that tempers its emotional appeals with formal and intellectual rigour. The blend of conventional tactics (talking heads, including Redford’s grizzled mug) with brilliantly designed graphics and Malickian lyrical interludes keeps the film fresh for its duration, and a slow-cooked metaphor linking urban sprawl to cancer (both are comprised of cells replicating beyond a body’s ability to properly integrate them) hits with furious force. The film is a masterpiece of sorts, proving that agit-prop can work outside of the hectoring, Michael Moore-minted format.”
Adam Nayman, Eye Weekly