 "Photo: Caleb Miller")
"The Unforeseen" opens with a vision of how Austin must appear through the eyes of God: We look down on and through the then-unfinished Frost Bank Tower, as the rays of a setting sun shoot through the spire's skeletal frame. Behind it, backlit by the beautiful reds and oranges of a Texas sunset, lay the vibrant and ever-diminishing greens of the Texas Hill Country.
"What had been foreseen was the coming of the Stranger with Money," intones a disembodied narrator, reading from the Wendell Berry poem from which the film draws its title. "All that had been before had been destroyed: The salt marsh of unremembered time, the remembered homestead, orchard and pasture."
This powerful opening perfectly sets the stage for Austinite Laura Dunn's lyrical, resonant new documentary, "The Unforeseen," which opened at the Alamo South Lamar this weekend.
The movie begins as all great epics must, with a young boy leaving his rural home behind, venturing into the big, bold world in search of success. In this case, that boy is developer Gary Bradley, one of Texas' most influential real estate developers. His quest brings him to Austin, where his plans to create the massive Circle C Ranch development conflict with the nascent local environmental movement, which begins to draw momentum when it becomes clear that Bradley's plans will endanger the much-beloved Barton Springs.
Dunn's film charts the ensuing battle between progress and preservation, featuring interviews with Bradley himself, Willie Nelson, local environmental leaders and even former governor Ann Richards.
"The Unforeseen," which will draw inevitable comparisons to the far inferior "An Inconvenient Truth," succeeds where so many issue documentaries fail. Instead of a wrist-slashingly dull look at real estate development - replete with facts, figures and talking heads - Dunn instead approached the topic with a quiet humanity that lends the film incredible resonance. Beautifully shot in crystal-clear high definition, it's a feast for the eyes and ears.
Perhaps most importantly, "The Unforeseen," tells a story of transcendent importance that resonates far beyond the Austin city limits. The unending struggle between the natural and unnatural worlds is, as Bradley himself points out, "quintessentially American." For anyone who has ever seen a beloved childhood tree chopped down or witnessed a quaint patch of farmland transformed into a Circuit City, "The Unforeseen" will prove worthwhile viewing.
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