Tapped starts in a small
town in Maine, where natural springs abound and where Poland Springs (owned by
Nestle) has been pumping out water. This opens the story to popular
bottled water brands in America, particularly Poland Springs, Dasani, and
Aquafina (produced by Nestle, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi, respectively). It
talks about a wide range of topics during the film, visiting drought-ridden
Mississippi where bottlers still pump water while the state thirsts; a town on
the edge of a bottle-making factory, where cancer rates are higher than
average, due to a chemical from the factory; interviews with company
representatives, who evade and bureaucratize, smiling uncertainly when they don't
have an answer; touching on commercialization and advertising of water; travelling
to a small island in the Pacific, where the sand is partially comprised of
particles of plastic; and back to the small town in Maine, where local activism
and rallies encourage the audience to join the cause.
The
results are shocking. Dangerous
chemicals found in bottles – and the water contained in them – go unchecked by
the FDA, whose hands are tied and which has no teeth to enforce its rules. Millions of bottles are littered each year,
turning our oceans into plastic soup and our beaches into unofficial
landfills. Bottling companies pump water
from drying lakes and rivers, or merely filter municipal tap water and bottle
it.
There is not a main
character or central story. The
documentary is structured more as an investigation than a story, but that does
not make it less interesting. The
subject matter itself, and the many smaller anecdotes associated with it, are
interesting enough on their own without a central character. Bottled water is such a part of everyday life
that hearing the unpleasant truth about it will rivet viewers to the screen.
One of the strong
points of the documentary was the repeated motif of a film reel holding newspaper
headlines. Relevant headlines to
whatever the documentary was covering at the moment would occasionally pop up
in a film reel, effortlessly gaining credibility through clever use of the text
track.
The A-Roll and B-Roll
in the documentary were balanced beautifully, with interviews and b-roll playing
off each other to complement the narration, which was the backbone of the
film. The narration could have stood by
itself as a story, but it would not have been as good without the visuals and
the text track.
Tapped is an
eye-opening expository documentary that will forever change how you look at
bottled water. 75 minutes. 4 stars.
