A Crude Awakening is the kind of film that, if it doesn't give you at least a nightmare or two, then it's hard to imagine what exactly would frighten you. A scarifying work that's less a documentary than an extended debate or lecture (like An Inconvenient Truth without the slideshow and studio audience), the film tries to answer a question that seems to have mostly fallen by the wayside in much of the recent discussion about the environment and energy policy. It's a two-part question, actually: When is the oil going to run out, and what's going to happen when it does?

Tag-team directors Basil Gelpke, Ray McCormack, and Reto Caduff don't try to pretend that they know exactly what the answer is to that question, but they assemble a commendably well-credentialed ring of experts to take a stab at it. To the first part of the question, one expert seems to sum up the consensus: "Demand is on the march, and supply is flattening out." Given the billions that have been spent on oil exploration in the last few decades, and that new oil-field discoveries peaked in the late 1960s, the film's take is that it's all downhill from here, with the peak of production just around the corner. Startling footage of the apocalyptic wasteland that is the now-dry oil fields of Baku on the Caspian Sea (decrepit oil derricks, crammed in like so many toothpicks on a caterer's tray, stretch to the flat and muddy horizon) graphically highlight the point.

As for what happens once the oil fields start to run dry, the film has some pretty graphic responses. In short, we've been spoiled by cheap energy, and belts are going to have to be tightened rather severely. After tagging the viscous substance itself with villainous definitions ("excrement of the devil," "black blood," "a magnet for war"), the film's experts start laying out the future's bleak terms. First, easy transportation will be severely curtailed, most particularly air travel -- which some believe will become so expensive that a couple generations from now will view it as an elite activity along the lines of first-class passage on the QE2. Then comes the belt-tightening, as inexpensive oil-based fertilizers and food shipments dwindle away, leading to a shrinking of the world's population by as many as one or two billion people. And no, alternative energy sources won't (at least any discovered as of yet) provide anything more than a band-aid for the problem. It's a startling conclusion, and one absolutely at odds with the determinedly upbeat endings of most green-oriented non-fiction films that seem to say we can save the world if we turn off a light and recycle our milk cartons.

The talking heads who prognosticate in doom-filled terms throughout A Crude Awakening are nobody's idea of thrilling speakers. And yet the front-line expertise they bring to the subject, and their stripped-down, bone-dry presentation are ultimately much more satisfying and elucidating then if the filmmakers had leavened the mix with a lot of sound-bite-friendly environmental journalists and muckrakers. By having this motley and non-green crew deliver the bad news about our likely very limited future -- there's a Republican congressman in there, along with a Bush energy adviser and a former OPEC leader -- could possibly mean that it has more of a chance of being heard. It's a good lesson that other message-focused filmmakers should heed: when your message is this frightening, play it straight.



Black gold. Texas tea.