Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Movie Review: An Inconvenient Truth

By Chad Jones

An Inconvenient Truth

Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet's climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced- a catastrophe of our own making. If that sounds like a recipe for serious gloom and doom -- think again. From director Davis Guggenheim comes the Sundance Film Festival hit, "An Inconvenient Truth," which offers a passionate and inspirational look at one man's commitment to expose the myths and misconceptions that surround global warming and inspire actions to prevent it. That man is former Vice President Al Gore, who, in the wake of defeat in the 2000 election, re-set the course of his life to focus on an all-out effort to help save the planet from irrevocable change. In this eye-opening and poignant portrait of Gore and his 'traveling global warming show,' Gore is funny, engaging, open and downright on fire about getting the surprisingly stirring truth about what he calls our 'planetary emergency' out to ordinary citizens before it's too late.

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on An Inconvenient Truth

Outside of the political sphere, the average person probably doesn't plan on spending their Saturday evening with former Vice President Al Gore. And inside of the political sphere . . . the average person still probably doesn’t plan on spending their Saturday evening with former Vice President Al Gore. In fact, former V.P. Al Gore probably doesn’t even want to spend his night with former V.P. Al Gore. But if you suddenly find yourself in an environmentally-conscious mood, as DFW’s plethora of pick-up truck and H-2 owners often find themselves, drive to your — er, walk to your — local theater and check out Gore’s apocalyptic global warming film An Inconvenient Truth. Directed by Davis Guggenheim, director of the HBO series Deadwood, and staring none other than Al Gore (and I mean that literally; no one is in the thing except for Gore), the film is a one-hundred-minute-long report card regarding the increasing concentration of C0 ( short for ‘carbon monoxide’ — aka ‘the bad stuff’) in Earth’s atmosphere its disastrous results. According to Gore, this report card is a stinker. In fact, this is the kind of report card you race home to swipe from the mail before your mother comes home, only to find it was sent out a day earlier and now you can’t take that trip to Cancun for the weekend with your friend Billy and his parents, even though Billy’s parents were never going and you just told your mother that so she’d let you go and spend the weekend on the beach with Stacee, that blonde from Algebra II who writes you notes and signs her name with two ‘e’s even though her real name is Patricia . . .

To spell out the crux of the film (for those of us who ain’t too good with numbers and research and paying attention to when people talk about things): the Earth is heating up. And while the Earth is prone to periods of gradual warming and cooling, past cycles have been much less severe. As Gore’s slides suggest, everything we humans don’t want to happen has happened within the last few decades: the hottest seasonal temperatures ever recorded have occurred in the last five years—causing the frequency and ferocity of hurricanes and typhoons to increase—and the number of species added to the endangered list has ballooned as a result of off-centered biological rhythms due to environmental fluctuations.

The consequence of Gore’s involvement in An Inconvenient Truth is a win-lose. While an issue so convoluted as global warming needs a well-recognized and well-respected motivating force behind it, Gore’s name might be a little too ‘recognizable’. As a result, many may mistakenly regard the film not as a call to action, but as yet another round of pointing fingers. Yes, Al Gore, the conspicuously-downhearted Democrat who nearly became the President, is the narrator of this ecological emergency, but in light of the film’s legitimate scientific data and intent, it doesn’t truly matter who is behind a movement which can benefit us all. Though the film is subject to cheesy animations designed specifically to merit a chuckle, as well as potentially sugary moments wherein Gore discusses his by-gone country days on his family’s farm, An Inconvenient Truth strikes a common nerve amongst its viewers to preserve and cherish the humankind’s only home. Overall, the film is fluid and understandable, powerfully presented, and righteously upsetting.

How can you help, you ask nonchalantly? First and foremost, you can visit climatecrisis.net, a website referenced in the closing of the film. But if that’s not enough, you can do the environment an easy favor by conserving electricity. Though some people may envision it as a magical resource from some other dimension, the electric current which charges your iPod actually comes from somewhere. And where it comes from is most often coal-churning power plants which, according to mysterious scientific ‘co-ink-ee-dinks’, must belch out more and more emissions (‘bad stuff) into the atmosphere the harder they are forced to work. Therefore, turn off lights when you’re not using them. Let the sun pour through your window instead. And don’t spend hours wandering the web without intent; simply restrict your internet usage to TexasGigs and keep your computer turned off the remainder of the day.

Also check out Alex Bentley's take on this film.

Related stories

• Movie review: It Might Get Loud (Sept. 3, 2009)

See more stories in:

Comments

John Meyer Staff

Good and sly review, Chad. I saw the film a couple weeks ago (by driving to Plano from Old Lake Highlands in my 40 mpg Honda Civic, AHEM!), and you've pretty much nailed it.

Did you notice, though, that the ending credits gave us little or nothing about the scientific documentation used by Mr. Gore as the foundation for his arguments? Hey, I'm sure his old college science teacher was a sharp guy and all, but I wanted to see some other citations in this regard, and they were not forthcoming. Still, I'll lower my thermostat and all... :>/

3 years, 4 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )