Since DeChristopher's trial was postponed several times, the filmmakers were able to follow him for several years. He's a vigorous and interesting character, with the rhetorical skills of a veteran speechifier.
Yet in private moments, he seems younger than the prematurely balding 27-year-old he was when the case began. The movie shows him at home on the morning of his sentencing, making breakfast and drinking milk directly from the bottle. It also revisits his West Virginia childhood, which encouraged his love of nature and his outrage at its despoiling.
Less informatively, Bidder 70 scants the legalities of the case. Clearly, DeChristopher peeved the Bureau of Land Management and the oil and gas industries, but the movie doesn't detail which law or laws he actually broke.
After Redford calls the auction bids "a peaceful protest," the documentary quickly sketches the history of civil disobedience, invoking some names that may be familiar: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and such. But the DeChristopher case really speaks to a newer phenomenon: the attempt to elevate economic interests over freedom of speech, wherein a growing number of right-wing lawyers and judges are interpreting (or reinterpreting) laws to privilege corporations over individuals, and elevate business efficiencies over the messy, time-wasting distractions of full public debate.
DeChristopher's primary concern is climate change, which is no small issue. But Bidder 70 would be more compelling if it had used the U.S. government's assault on the ad hoc activist to also discuss threats to the American political environment.