Released in 2009, award-winning Canadian film The Trotsky has so many elements of being a typical North American indie high school comedy.

An array of awkward, middle class suburban teenagers  – check. Geeky male protagonist with crush on an older woman – check. Family arguments over the dinner table – check. Constant feuds with authority, usually in the form of the school’s management – check. Hip indie soundtrack – check. Bill Murray – check.

Okay, I did make the last one up, but the similarities with Rushmore, the 1998 Wes Anderson movie, don’t go unnoticed.  But there is a few vital differences. For one, while both film’s eccentric protagonists spend all their times devoted to far-fetched extra-curricular activities, Rushmore’s wants a school aquarium. Our anti-hero in The Trotsky, on the other hand, wants… a union! And nor is his go-to guy an eccentric wealthy industrialist, but in this case, an aging leftie scholar just waiting to rediscover his student activist past.

The reason being, that The Trosky’s central character, slightly neurotic seventeen year old student Leon Bronstein, is convinced that he’s the reincarnation of his namesake, Leon Trotsky – to such an extent that’s he’s mapped his life out accordingly. There’s no doubt that it’s an interesting interpretation of Trotskyism, with Bronstein, played by Canadian actor Jay Baruchel, obsessed with ‘fate’, pretty peculiar in itself for a self-declared dialectical materialist – or as one character puts it ‘for a Marxist you make a great Hindu’. His attitude to women leaves a lot to be desired as well – one of the key plotlines of the film is Bronstein’s attempts to get PhD student Alexandra, which happens to also be the name of Trotsky’s first wife, to fall in love with him. Pretty creepy.

Bronstein’s major obsession is starting unions. So when his factory-owning father takes him in for some work experience and Leon tries to unionise the workforce and calls a ‘hunger strike’, as punishment, his dad takes him out of his exclusive private school and he begins the new term in a state school. Joining the student union, he soon discovers that their entire ‘legislative power’ extends to organising the school dance.

Taking a couple of other students under his wing, he sets about organising a ‘real’ union, predictably coming into conflict with the school principal (who for reasons which are never explained bears a startling resemblance to Lenin), student bureaucrats and the school board. There’s various trials and tribulations along the way as we then see Bronstein organise a strike of the school’s students and step things up as the film reaches its conclusion. As for the school dance, the theme becomes ‘social change’, leading to one of the funniest, most offbeat scenes of the film as groups of Zapatistas, Black Panthers and Maoists march on the school hall.

There’s a few pitfalls in the film – the fact it plays to every negative stereotype of Trotskyists as being a bunch of crazy idealists being one of them. Bronstein is eccentric to the max, not always in a good way, meaning he’s always more of an anti-hero than anything else. But the film does becomes more sympathetic to him and his aims as it goes on, with his friends rallying their sceptical class mates to the cause.

It’s a film that doesn’t take itself too seriously though – director Jacob Tiernay has said that he tried making serious political films before coming to the realisation that “Fuck me. I am not Ken Loach.” So if you’re looking for a deadly serious appraisal of Leon Trotsky, his life and ambitions, this is not that film (FAO: boring trot blogs). But for what The Trotsky is, a quirky high school comedy in the vein of Wes Anderson, with some radical politics thrown in for good measure, it’s a decent watch and pretty funny, and enough in-jokes to keep leftie viewers entertained, but without making it totally inaccessible to people who haven’t written a thesis on the Russian Civil War.

ps. The Trotsky is now out on DVD in Canada. It hasn’t been released in Europe, and isn’t available on Region 2, but there are a few torrents kicking about the internetz…

Warning: This post contains some upsetting stuff about dead ducks.

The above video is one of several shot by William Todd Powell, a senior biologist working for the Province of Alberta in Canada. It shows a duck struggling to escape from a tailings pond, where oil company Syncrude dumped the toxic leftovers of its operation to extract oil from the Alberta tar sands.

Over 1,500 migrating ducks landed on the pond, covering themselves with the deadly residue. The vast majority of them died. Now Syncrude is facing a trial for its failure to protect the ducks, and the company could face up to $800, 000 in fines, and executives ultimately could get 6 months in prison.

Syncrude admit that they had failed to properly install noise-making equipment to scare the ducks away from landing on the toxic pond as they were migrating.

The disaster could have been covered up were it not for the courageous efforts of tipsters like Powell. Although legally obliged to do so, Syncrude had failed to inform authorities of what had happened. But when Powell and other wildlife officials got on the scene, their shocking images and video stormed around the internet, and forced action.

Footage of a Greenpeace action against the tar sands.

The whole affair has brought into sharp focus the environmental battle to stop exploitation of the tar sands. As the possibility of peak oil begins to bite, the fossil fuel industry is desperately looking for new areas to exploit to keep their profits flowing. The tar sands in Canada offer the prospect of huge new reserves, but they are very difficult to extract. This means huge amounts of energy are used in the process, causing massive carbon emissions. It also means enormous destruction of the natural environment, including much land that is home to Canada’s embattled indigenous people as well as pristine boreal forest. The fight to stop further exploitation of the oil sands is one of the most important battles against climate change and ecological destruction in North America, if not the world. Exploitation of the tar sands alone is enough to make Canada fail to meet its obligations under the Kyoto agreement on global warming.

Lawyers for Syncrude have entered a plea of not guilty to the trial, claiming there was nothing they could have done to prevent the disaster. Shamefully, they have attacked William Todd Powell, and, supported by the corporate media in Canada, accused him of “showboating”. Syncrude argues that Powell should have “shot the ducks with a gun not a camera” as that would have been more humane. Leaving aside the complete heartless hypocrisy of the statement, this ignores the fact that actually Alberta wildlife authorities did shoot the ducks that were in range to put them out of their misery. However, the pond is so vast and the number of ducks so huge, it was only possible for them to reach a fraction of them.

Ed Stelmach: Twat in a hat

The Conservative Premier of Alberta, Ed Stelmach, is unfortunately in the pocket of Syncrude and the other oil companies. His government has given approval to a massive expansion of tar sands operations, as well as spending millions on trying to improve the image of the dirty oil project. Responding to the disaster, he bizarrely chose to call the horrific duck deaths an “opportunity” to show the world Alberta “means business” when it comes to environmental protection. Quite how footage of dead and dying ducks does this is unclear.

In an even more ridiculous gaffe, Stelmach also told reporters recently he had not seen the notorious duck images, even though they had been headline news on TV and in the papers in Alberta. His comments outraged many, as they felt they showed a total lack of concern for his own responsibility in the disaster. In response, opposition politicians gave him photos in the legislature, and Greenpeace delivered blown-up and gift wrapped photos in person.

“Not even looking at the front page of papers in this province? That’s something that is not responsible for a premier to do. They are taking Syncrude to court, but are they actually examining their own actions?” said Mike Hudema of Greenpeace.

Greenpeace activists deliver gift-wrapped photos of the dying ducks to Ed Stelmach

Stelmach and his spokespeople have offered various different stories to try and get out of looking stupid over his claims. Stelmach now claims he thought reporters were asking if he’d seen the photos before they were introduced in court, which they clearly weren’t. His team have also claimed that they give him news clippings each morning with the pictures cut out. “He doesn’t have the luxury of opening a paper in the morning,” said his communications director, Cam Hantiuk. “He missed the visuals.”

The fact is that the disastrous tar sands development is being driven by the corporate greed of Syncrude and others, and whatever the results of the trial they will continue to have huge control over the political process in Canada as elsewhere. The heroic work of William Todd Powell in exposing them shows the world a model of a responsible public servant. Unfortunately, Canadian governments see work like his as less of a priority than defending dirty developments, as wildlife services across the country face budget cutbacks and lay-offs.

The horrific duck deaths just underline the need for grassroots activism that works on the ground to undermine the power of the oil lobby and their paid-for politicians.