Stream It Or Skip It: ‘To the End’ on Hulu, a Political Doc About Climate Activists Swimming Against the Current of American Politics

To the End (now on Hulu) is a horror movie for climate-change deniers, sexists, sleazy lobbyists and assorted delusional types who’d break out into a cold sweat at the mere thought of spending 90 minutes watching intelligent, passionate, politically progressive women accomplish things – especially since one of them is New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose generally reasonable thinking tends to get the MAGA contingent in a froth. As she did in 2019’s Knock Down the House, director Rachel Lears followed AOC and three other women as they attempted to chip away at deeply entrenched political powers in the U.S., but this time, the focus shifts from election campaigns to the Green New Deal, and the push to get some climate-change policy passed, and hopefully assuage one or two of the litany of fears so many of us hold about the planet’s current and future environmental catastrophe. 

TO THE END: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Varshini Prakash stands amidst rubble that used to be retail space in Northern California before it was brutally torched by wildfires. Deer poke along the edges of the devastation, and you can’t help but be reminded of the famous footage of animals occupying what remains of Chernobyl. Science tells us that the growing regularity of wildfires are the direct result of global climate change, and at this point in the narrative, 2018, the United States government had not addressed the issue with any sort of policy – and in fact, the Trump administration actively worked against it. Such deranged cognitive dissonance is enough to drive a person into despair, but Prakash is not one of those persons. She heads the nonprofit Sunrise Movement, an activist collective putting political pressure on the government to do something, anything, about climate change. 

To call it an uphill climb is to say scaling Everest is an opportunity to catch a breath of fresh air, but Prakash seems to have more passion and energy than most. This doesn’t mean simply confronting Republican denials, but also putting the screws to moderate Democrats who aren’t using their power to push for the drastic environmental policies that science dictates needs to happen for the sake of, well, civilization itself. She and 50 other Sunrise members bum-rushed the office of then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and staged a sit-in, and before they were all arrested, AOC herself showed up to encourage them. The protest happened when AOC was pushing the Green New Deal, an aggressive proposal to replace fossil fuel consumption with renewable energy, and create jobs in the process. 

AOC and Prakash aren’t alone. Rallying alongside them are Alexandra Rojas of political action committee Justice Democrats, and Rhiana Gunn-Wright, director of climate policy for liberal think tank Roosevelt Institute. While AOC works the angles in D.C., she laughs at how “mediocre” Republican expert witnesses on climate are, and bemoans how trying to get anything done in Congress is like navigating the long, bewildering passages and myriad dead ends of a maze. Meanwhile, Prakash, Rojas and Gunn-Wright continue their grassroots campaigns, which experience significant growth among younger Americans. Gunn-Wright leads discussions among progressive community activists. Rojas tirelessly backs progressive political candidates in primary elections, and expresses astonishment that CNN recruited her to be a political commentator. Prakash builds Sunrise from 20 to 300 chapters, and ends up arm-in-arm with Bernie Sanders as he pushes climate change policy and hopes to become the Democratic candidate for president. The doc follows them through all the wins and setbacks of the next four years as they do their god-damnedest to get their messages and policy demands across. Meanwhile, unprecedented flooding and fires and brutal storms continue, mercilessly.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The 2019 doc Slay the Dragon followed similarly young, optimistic lefties in their quest to curtail rampant gerrymandering in Michigan (and hey guess what, they succeeded). 

Performance Worth Watching: Although all four principals’ voices are refreshing amidst the tsunami of cynicism that is American politics, Gunn-Wright’s unapologetic, no-nonsense (and often cuss-happy) manner of speaking is especially endearing. 

Memorable Dialogue: A particularly inspiring bon mot via Prakash: “Moments of crisis crack open the window of possibility.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Let’s be clear about To the End’s lack of focus: It hops hither and yon from principal to principal, touching on this tangential topic (the link between environmental destruction and systemic racism) and that tangential topic (Sen. Joe Manchin is a creep). The Green New Deal is sort of the focus – it’s AOC’s baby, and Prakash, Rojas and Gunn-Wright are wholeheartedly behind it, but their individual narrative lines don’t weave together tightly. Lears sticks with an observational verite style as she follows her subjects, and inevitably, AOC and Prakash stand out for their high-profile efforts (Prakash frequently inspires the type of assembly of activists that results in multiple arrests and public shaming of Manchin) while Rojas is often seen sitting for CNN spots (that often result in her frustration) and Gunn-Wright’s work remains vague (at one point, she reveals she’s pregnant, which brings an emotional component to the urgency of mitigating the effects of climate change). 

However, stepping back and viewing the documentary’s many splinters as a mosaic of sorts reveals a hopeful narrative arc. All four principals take punches, but ultimately use the losses to further fuel their gumption. There’s enough desperation and confidence among them that keeps them fighting for their beliefs, doggedly. They’re points of light in dark times, when an objective truth like climate change is grossly politicized, and when traditional nobody wins/everybody loses political compromise just can’t be an option. Lears follows them all the way to 2022, when the Green New Deal sputtered and fizzled out as it passed through many political hands, and almost miraculously re-emerged as the Inflation Reduction Act. To the End streamlines a lot of stuff into a watchable, but uneven 93 minutes that doesn’t really show and tell us anything we didn’t already know, e.g., Washington D.C. is an ethical shitshow, and shoveling out the sludge takes work, work and more work, and then some work after that. But Lears’ goal is more likely to inspire us to take on some of that work, or to at least support those that do.

Our Call: Despite its rather-too-broad approach to its subject matter, To the End is a compelling on-the-ground behind-the-scenes over-the-shoulder glimpse at the mechanisms of American progressive politics. STREAM IT, and don’t be surprised if Lears makes a third doc like this, because the story is far from over. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.