Sundance review: 'The Cost of Silence' builds up rage against an environmental cover-up

‘The Cost of Silence’

★★★1/2

Playing in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 84 minutes.

Screens again: Friday, Jan. 31, 9 a.m., Holiday Village 2 (Park City); Saturday, Feb. 1, 3 p.m., Tower (Salt Lake City).

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If one wishes to get righteously angry, to rail against the mendacity of a major corporation and the complicity of the U.S. government, look no further than “The Code of Silence,” a riveting mix of investigative journalism and heartbreaking testimony about a public-health nightmare.

It starts with the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, when 11 people were killed and millions of gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from a busted undersea oil well. But fears of crude oil washing up on the shores of Gulf Coast beaches — where millions of tourists visit every year — never materialized, and the oil company BP (which ran Deepwater Horizon) and the relevant government agencies said everything would be all right.

People living in the small towns along the Gulf Coast soon discovered that everything was not all right. Kids were getting nosebleeds, adults were getting rashes and hair falling out, and other symptoms. The suspected culprit — more than suspected to scientists who didn’t hew to BP-supported studies — was a chemical dispersant, Corexit, that was sprayed from the air onto the spills to break up the oil.

But when oil is dispersed, it’s still there in aerosol form, getting breathed in and leading to all manner of illnesses. Getting BP or any of the relevant federal agencies to acknowledge that has been a nightmare.

The pressure by BP shows up in ways gross and subtle. People agitating for a solution sometimes get threatened, or their property damaged. Doctors are discouraged from diagnosing chemical exposure, because insurance companies will tie them up with paperwork because there aren’t enough studies backing such a diagnosis.

The Goliath in this scenario is mostly invisible; bosses from neither the company that makes the dispersants nor BP nor federal agencies agreed to be interviewed for the movie. But director Mark Manning has a lot of Davids to talk to, parents turned activists who have gotten fed up and are taking action.

Manning is on a timetable, too. President Donald Trump proposed in 2017 to lift many restrictions on oil drilling off every coastline in America, but decided to delay a full plan until after the 2020 elections. So even when “The Cost of Silence” is at its most pessimistic, it does offer a simple solution: Vote.