Deepwater Horizon

I woke up at 4:44 in the morning feeling like there was a dementor in the room, my heart racing. I chose to blame the prior night's movie outing; I had gone to see Deepwater Horizon, about the massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It was a much more violent movie than I'm used to watching. The outcome of the story is fixed in history, so I'm not sure whether this post can contain spoilers.

Even though this film depicted a living nightmare, a huge inferno, pain, suffering, blood, shattering glass, creepy flickering lighting, men being tossed around like rag dolls, its grounding in true events kept it from being a horror movie. Fortunately for me, most of the gore was implied rather than shown. I only had to cover my eyes once. Glass was involved. Last week or so a minuscule sliver of glass sliced into my palm and I was shocked at how painful it was. Fast-forward to the movie: I couldn't even imagine what the naked character covered in glass shards from head to toe was going through, as he dug embedded glass out of his foot, and I didn't want to see it (I could still hear during this part, and I heard a lot of gasping).

Also, I would expect a horror movie to have little to offer in the way of purpose or a takeaway. But after seeing Deepwater Horizon, I texted my former safety supervisor at an old job and called it the ultimate safety movie. ("If people push back about following rules, show them this.") The explosion and deaths happened because safety wasn't being treated with the appropriate gravity and legitimate, measurable red flags were ignored. People often cut corners with no apparent consequences, but this movie depicted a sickening illustration of what consequences could look like. We don't do safety testing or obey best practices for funsies. We do because it matters. Watching this movie made me want to go obey some laws. It made my friend want to go buy an electric car. I would guess that her reaction is more typical.

By the way, I bet bp is just thrilled that this movie is coming out. A bp official is basically the villain of the movie. He is the personification of greed, causing the deaths of eleven people by his singular focus on hitting profit targets. I kept picturing his face during the horrific parts and thinking, "greed caused this hell." Though he is the inciting villain, he clearly did not want the rig to blow and eventually detonate. Yet "oil" isn't a super satisfying villain. It's just doing what oil does. Denial and negligence were the problem, the variable. In light of what I saw in the movie, I found it really stressful and sad that the bp workers were released of their 2010 charges of manslaughter. Their misplaced priorities caused eleven needless deaths (and all that brings for those left behind) plus untold pain, suffering, and fear for the survivors and their families. Wikipedia contains further damning details that the movie alludes to about how there had been a pattern of using "band-aids and gum" to fix real problems that needed a full fix. Wikipedia states, "according to a number of rig workers, it was understood that workers could get fired for raising safety concerns that might delay drilling." This pun is in poor taste, but... sounds like they got fired anyway! And also, what the hell, bp?

Lastly, I appreciated that the movie was able to take the topic "safety testing on an oil rig" and make it entertaining. They did a decent job of conveying the needed information without making me fall asleep. There was one moment I felt confused, but they must have recovered nicely because when it was all over, I could no longer remember what I didn't understand. And even had I understood none of what they were talking about, the interpersonal dynamics were plain--a seasoned expert finds that his gut instinct of dread is (ambiguously) supported by the numbers, but a greedy business rep is behind schedule, motivated by money, wants to impress his own supervisor, and has enough authority to override the objections. In short, the struggle between intuition/honesty and a fixation on a specific outcome. Generally, as in this movie specifically, I believe you should let go of a need for a preset outcome and deal with matters as they are instead of how you'd like them to be (which is a form of denial). After all, lives may hang in this balance.