Pistachio Wars (dir. Yasha Levine and Rowan Wernham)
I don’t ever really expect to watch too many films that have a direct relevance to what I do for a living five days a week. I mean, there’s certainly newsworthy elements to my day job, but in the grand scheme of things, at least here in Victoria, Australia, there probably isn’t enough to fill a feature length anything. California, on the other hand? California says, ‘hold my beer!’. Or, ‘hold my Evian’, perhaps. As if Roman Polanski’s Chinatown wasn’t enough, we have a very different and extremely timely, contemporary non-fiction account of what’s happening to the water supply over there in Yasha Levine and Rowan Wernham’s Pistachio Wars. A film that posits the small little green nut (that, as another aside, I am extremely allergic to) is at the heart of one of the most significant environmental catastrophes of the modern age. It may not have incest, but it does have billionaires social climbing while killing the earth for the sake of a buck. And also, Stephen Colbert was there earning a paycheck that I hope he regrets if he ever watches this. You hearin' me, Stephen?!
Levine is our co-director and on-screen guide to the story of how the son of a Ukrainian immigrant and the daughter of the producer of The Blob (the Steve McQueen original from 1958) came to own a farming empire that uses more water than the entire city of San Francisco would in a decade. Stewart and Lynda Resnick are one of those capitalistic peas in a pod, together making too much money to ever possibly need while also destroying the earth and donating just enough so as to appear charitable on their tax returns. Levine and Wernham slowly unravel a mystery that lingers in plain site—something or other from its intricate web of dealings occasionally makes it into the news, but inevitably never for very long for it to stick. As more and more of the shell begins to crack, new and abhorrent revelations come to light including the town that has been poisoned due to contaminated water thanks to the Resnick’s business practices that somehow merges fresh produce with oil. It’s like Erin Brockovich, if it was all disguised in weird cutesy television commercials featuring Korean pop stars dancing with pistachio nuts. Nuts being the operative word, truly. At one point, somebody shouts “show me the dead bodies!”, which is honestly never a good sign when being accused to endangering the lives of entire towns worth of people with a water supply that corrodes infrastructure and attacks the body’s organs to failure and causes rashes that won’t heal.
The first-time filmmakers are wise to anchor this story in the simple, effective storytelling. Good ol’ American greed is front and centre here, and its influence leaches into so many different areas like toxins into the ground. The Resnicks are portrayed (quite rightly) as the tech entrepreneurs of agriculture, hoovering up the state’s water for themselves just to grow some snack foods. And all with the help of those in power. It’s hardly surprising when we learn they’re on the board of The Washington Institute, a think tank that has argued for the need to go to war with Iran—coincidentally, the Resnick’s prime competition for the pistachio market. Wonders never cease.
Films like this always run into the issue of ‘preaching to the choir’. That those who are most likely to watch are those with the least urgency to do so. That those who already consider the environment and humanity’s destruction of it to be of the most grave importance don’t really need a movie like Pistachio Wars to make their case. And perhaps that’s true. Certainly, there are times when I think I don’t need another film about X or Y. In that regard, at least, Pistachio Wars felt like I was learning something new. That it’s polished and well-made helps. It’s doesn’t try anything out-of-the-box filmmaking wise, but like Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s excellent similarly water-themed The Grab, it takes a compelling environmental story and follows it in a way that is accessible to all, not just those who (like me) may be immersed in this sort of thing on a daily basis (albeit locally, but globally aware). I would have liked The Grab to have gained the sort of attention that Cowperthwaite got for Blackfish, but they sadly can’t all stick, which is probably why we get so many films about X or about Y. Maybe Pistachio Wars will be one to get something moving politically.
I found plenty to be shocked by. That pistachios take up to a thousand gallons for every pound of produce. That these orchards sit on top of Chevron oil reservoirs and that the waste from the production of that is being sent downstream and is killing the San Francisco Bay Delta. There are truly too many stats and facts to list them all. Pistachio Wars is much better and more intellectually rewarding than I had suspected due to its admittedly still rather unappealing title. I hope people watch it and get enraged. And if the first 15 minutes don’t, then the next hour will surely have you screaming into the void of nothingness while the rich cunts killing the planet enjoy the new wing of the art museum that they funded and put together their creepy-happy little memento mori baskets. It’s honestly all just sickening in too many ways to count. Thankfully, the drive of its filmmakers makes its portrayal of a dark world feel not so much like a chore. This isn't eating your vegetables. Here in Australia, it is currently streaming on SBS On Demand, and I have already shared with my colleagues. Maybe if enough people watch it, something might actually stick. At the very least, maybe fewer bags of pistachios or bottles of Fiji Water will get sold.
If you would like to support documentary and non-fiction film criticism, please consider donating by clicking the above link. Any help allows me to continue to do this, supports independent writing that is free of Artificial Intelligence, and is done purely for the love of it.
