An Inconveniently Timed Truth

I watched An Inconvenient Truth yesterday. Given all of the things I should have been--and should be--doing (uh, like memorizing the Hungarian national anthem? Cramming some last bits of memorization? Trying to master counting to ten in Hungarian?), perhaps it wasn't the most productive use of my time.

The movie was very illuminating. On the effectiveness scale, it fell somewhere between Michael Moore's documentaries and The Fog of War. It lacked the subtlety and poignancy of The Fog of War, but was more effective than Moore's in-your-face, preaching-to-the-choir style documentaries, which I tend to find a bit much. Which is not to say this movie doesn't preach to the choir; it does, even though it attempts to address critics and skeptics of his claims.

In the documentary, Al Gore presents a slide show on global warming. The slide show itself was excellent; had I seen Gore at Stanford or the Commonwealth Club giving this presentation, I would've given very high ratings for the lecture. His presentation was engaging; the slides were interesting; his main points came across well; he used very good examples; showed rather than told, etc. Although I had some issues with some of the claims he makes about population projections and about the Kyoto protocol, overall, his presentation seemed very well researched. I would've been perfectly happy with a movie that consisted of just his slide show.

The movie is also about the process of presenting the slideshow-- thus we see Gore toting his materials across airports, presenting it to audiences around the world, tweaking slides on the airplane, etc., while other times, we hear him thinking out loud. It was the addition of these extraneous clips-- his wistful reminiscing about the 2000 election situation; a very moving (but nonetheless distracting) story about losing his sister to lung cancer and how this affected his father's attitude towards their tobacco farm--which I felt detracted from the overall efficacy of the film. Take the 2000 election reference. At the opening of the film, he introduces himself as the former "next president of the United States", and then (jokingly) retorts to a laughing audience that he doesn't find this funny. This one reference to the 2000 election would've been fine, but then it is brought up again, halfway through the film. Although inclusion of this reference is probably the director's (and not Gore's) choice, I still found it detracting from an otherwise powerful message on global warming. Everyone who watches this film knows who Gore is. Even if he had not mentioned the 2000 election, the vast majority of us probably would've still made the association in our head (we already had one reminder of the situation from his self-introduction at the start of the film), which is why there is really no need to keep bringing this up. It is almost as if he implies that as a result of this devastating loss, he decides to channel his energies into global warming--or at least, I found myself making this subconscious connection, even though he mentions in the film that this topic has been a passion since his college days.

That said, although some of these tangential personal anecdotes made the film less effective for me, I still found his overall global warming message riveting. I also liked how in spite of its oft doomsday-sounding rhetoric, he ends his presentation by showing that this trend is still reversible, as well as concluding with a list of things we can do to change this trend. (A bibliography of sources and a longer list of things that can be done would've made me even happier.)

Finding a message "riveting" is not sufficient, though. There have been many positive reviews of this movie, which have led to many people going to see this movie, but one wonders whether this will lead to significant changes--whether among individuals or at the corporate or legislative levels. Those of us who are interested in seeing this film are probably already recycling, buying energy efficient bulbs, appliances, turning the water off while brushing our teeth, biking into work, and whatever else we can on the individual level. However, this is the kind of movie I'd want my ebullient co-workers and the very people who aren't likely to heed the warnings Gore gives to go see. The ones I not-so-jokingly harass when they (daily) toss an empty coke can or a newspaper into the garbage can, rather than into the recycling bin. The ones who think nothing of owning 9 mpg gas guzzling Hummers. The management of hotels that encourage you to reuse your towels, but yet do not have any recycling bins for paper, water bottles, pepsi cans, etc. (I stayed at 4 such hotels in the past two weeks.) Airlines that still don't seem to sort out their trash, despite the hundreds of thousands of cans and recyclable cups they must use daily. I doubt that any of these people or constituencies will be affected by this film, which is unfortunate.

Thus, in spite of its overall high ratings, I'm not sure if being "illuminating" or a "knockout success" is sufficient. Will anyone do anything differently as a result of this film?

Perhaps I'm asking too much of this film. But isn't this why Gore is has been giving this presentation to tens of thousands of people around the world? Not simply to rivet or impress, but to incite to act, to change?

In this regard, it seems to fall short of the unstated but clearly understood goal it sets out to achieve.

It's definitely worth going to see, but not something I'd add to my DVD collection.