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an inconvenient truth
I read Roger Ebert’s review, in which he wrote “You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to.” I heard radio talk show hosts (admittedly, they were liberals) repeatedly state that seeing the movie was an ‘ethical responsibility’ and a ‘moral obligation’. That latter phrase in particular has been tossed around an awful lot about this movie. Funny thing, though. I can sort of see why. Last week — or the week before that (my memory banks are fried today) — I saw An Inconvenient Truth at the Palm, a very small theatre in San Luis Obispo that makes its money showing the movies that nobody else will (usually because those movies aren’t exactly moneymakers). Oddly enough, every time I’ve seen a movie at the Palm, it’s been with a packed house. (Seeing Sideways there, in the company of so many locals who cheered for every location they recognized — which was almost every one of them — was a bizarre experience.) Truth was no different. The screening room held maybe eighty people, and there wasn’t an empty chair to be found. This for a film that’s been out for over a month, and is probably one of the most unusual cinematic experiences any of us will ever have. After all, if somebody had told you that one day you’d lay down good money to spend a hundred minutes watching Al Gore present a slideshow about global warming, wouldn’t you have laughed? I’m no scientist, and I can’t verify the facts that Gore presented in his movie, but not one of them rang false to me. (I like to think I have a good ear for improbability — did anybody else notice that when Lois Lane described Superman in Superman Returns, she included his weight as 115-125 pounds?) And if that’s the case — if these facts are indisputable — then we as a species have an awful lot of repair work to begin, and quickly. That nothing happens quickly in this country has never been as frustrating as it is when you’re watching this movie.
Most of the reviews of An Inconvenient Truth take the stance that this isn’t a political film. Gore acknowledges this himself in the movie, calling global warming a moral issue, not a political one. But I don’t really believe this is true. Gore’s slideshow and conversation about the issue is intercut with footage of him with his family and alone, talking about difficult or charming experiences in his life — e.g. the near-death of his son, or growing up on the family farm. That he ultimately uses each of these diversions as a metaphor for what we stand to lose as a species doesn’t erase the fact that a not-insignificant amount of screen time is spent on Gore himself. But that’s not a bad thing. No matter your political affiliation, I think you’d be hard-pressed to deny that Al Gore has never been quite so engaging as he is here. Had this particular Gore shown up during the presidential race six years ago, things might have turned out differently. Watching as Gore confidently presents the facts that he’s accumulated during his years of research, you can’t help but think to yourself: Wouldn’t it be nice to have a president who was passionate about something, who was more than an empty shirt? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a president who knew something without asking somebody else? Even if An Inconvenient Truth is nothing more than a carefully-disguised campaign film, it succeeds in further tarnishing the image of the current administration simply by showing us the alternative that we might have had.
But this isn’t a campaign film. It might not be the most terrifying thing you’ve ever seen, as many critics and in some cases even the film’s marketing campaign have claimed, but it’s definitely sobering. The images are dramatic and breathtaking. Gore shows us a snowy Kilimanjaro twenty years old, and the dusty mountain of today; he runs through comparison photos of glaciers and seas, demonstrating the effect of global warming in a way that words can’t quite accomplish. The most worrisome of his points was about the melting of the ice caps and Greeland; he identified a number of Rhode Island-sized chunks of Antarctica that were already problem areas, some — like the Larsen B ice shelf, which is shown in time-lapse photographs as essentially disintegrating in some thirty-five days — that have already begun to break up. Were these to cause larger areas of the caps to come apart, Gore pointed out, as is the concern of many scientists, then the sea level worldwide could easily rise twenty feet or more as a result. With a series of computer animations, he shows the effect that this sort of change would have on familiar locations like Manhattan and Florida as well as overseas, and the changes are devastating. The movie is far from just scare tactics. Gore presents a series of suggestions for reclaiming our planet, most of which revolve around conservation and changing our reliance on oil to exploring renewable, alternative fuel sources. As the credits roll, they’re interspersed with a couple of dozen suggestions for how the average person can take action. My favorite: Write your congressman. If he doesn’t do anything, run for Congress. Is it fair to say that it’s your ethical responsibility to see this movie? Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. One of Gore’s most interesting points is that in a random sampling of ten percent of peer-reviewed scientific articles published recently, not a single one disputes the facts of global warming. In contrast, a random sampling of ten percent of recent media stories revealed that 53% presented the concept of global warming as unconfirmed and possibly untrue. I’d like to see the data to back this up, but quite honestly, I don’t doubt the statistic. The most outlandish ones are often the most true.
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February 3rd, 2007 at 12:13 am
Great review, I’ll be checking this one out when I get some free time.
February 14th, 2007 at 7:54 am
Deeply, Sound observations. I always thank - rhetorically - Rush L for being so passionate about the global warming “myth”. Maybe when his Manhattan office building is flooded it won’t seem like a distant reality. The move made me want to learn powerpoint.
February 26th, 2010 at 1:20 am
Good work i think your site is very nice and helpfull
February 26th, 2010 at 1:20 am
very good site…
April 28th, 2010 at 6:09 am
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