Imagine a boy who has never even been inside an automobile being sent to the United States to receive a high school education. Imagine being the son of an indigenous way of life where your elders hope a college education in urban North America will help you become a leader in the Amazon jungle of South America against toxic corporate practices that have occupied your land for decades.
Imagine a boy from a comfortable middle-class suburban upbringing obsessing over a David vs. Goliath legal battle on another continent. Imagine being the son of Massachusetts parents that support his perennial trips to Equador and his tireless efforts to understand and assist in righting an infrastructure of injustice.
See “Oil & Water.” It showcases these two very different lives, how their paths cross and become intertwined. The generations that generated the mounting global messes should be working as hard as they can to help millennials stem the tide and turn the momentum. Whatever. Follow two personable cases of putting one’s youth to the grindstone and trying to work inside the system to make a difference.
The film is not structured to make it look like these young men are conducting a fool’s errand. If it comes to mind that their dedication is like a naïve boat in a brutish ocean, never mind. Two boys have become two young men, and their generation needs as many people like them as their generation can muster.
Hugo Lucitante and David Poritz from "Oil and Water"
