Al Gore’s not running for anything,
but he’s still campaigning. Timed to coincide with the publication of his book
of the same name, An Inconvenient Truth is not so much a standard
documentary as a concert film designed to motivate the faithful and convince
the skeptics about the dangers of global warming. Most of the movie is taken up
by the former vice president’s “stage show,” a lecture he’s given around the
world, by his own estimation, over a thousand times. A “global warning,” you
might say. The Gore seen here is passionate, engaging, and even occasionally
funny. (His standard line that he “used to be the next president of the United
States” got a laugh from both the on-screen audience and the one at the preview
screening I saw, after which Gore took questions.) The “behind-the scenes”
footage consists of moderately interesting vignettes about Gore’s environmental
awakening as well as striking examples of global melting. Photos showing how
much snow has melted from various mountains were among the most memorable parts
of the film. (NPR science reporter Richard Harris has noted that the melting on
Mt. Kilimanjaro may result mostly from drought. He also criticized the film for
showing long-term projections without clarifying the time frame, but, as with
other scientific commentators on the film, said that it gets the science
largely right.) The most compelling of the facts the film musters relates to an
analysis, published in Science magazine, of peer-reviewed journal articles on climate change. The
author found none of the 928 articles, dating from 1993 to 2003, disputed the
“consensus position” on climate change. Given its format, this isn’t the most
cinematic of films, but it’s much less dry than I would have thought if you’d
told me it was a filmed lecture. In fact, the pizzazz-y charts and graphs Gore
uses do an excellent job of making a complex subject understandable.
viewed at PFS screening; posted 8/16/13
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