An Inconvenient Truth
(2006)
review by Died with Boots On

A global warning about global warming, a "Parental Advisory" to the people of Stockholm, Tokyo, Liverpool, to the people of Munich and Los Angeles and Zurich, London, Belfast, Moscow, Berlin, New York City, Warsaw, Beijing, to every person, every family, every nation. I really want this review to do Al Gore's crusade justice. He is a selfless warrior who relinquished his political agenda in hopes of reaching bipartisan audiences for a cause that started him down the road of politics, and now ended it. As a youngster, he brought the notion into the light and chiseled the Kyoto Protocol out of deaf ears. Mr. Gore welcomes the collateral damage to his reputation by embroidering this passion for the environment on his sleeve, and the least anyone can do is to hear him out, with an open mind or a narrow mind, as long as you don't file his documentary into a big cardboard portmanteau of things you cold-shoulder because the trailer rubbed you the wrong way, or because you got a bad vibe. There's no excuse to wave your hand and mumble "Good riddance" as it fades from theaters, no excuse to cross your eyes for a hair of a second and scan over it as you shuffle through "Blockbuster," no excuse to cross your arms and label it "tree hugging propaganda." It's a truth, and it's not convenient.

Introducing himself as the man who used to be the next President of the United States, Mr. Al Gore storms the amphitheatre. With a fevered, impassioned stage presence, you almost expect fire to catapult from the palms of his hands as his sobering truths tower above us like mourners weeping over our open grave. Although he is mild-mannered, this is a very different Gore than the man we scoffed at and parodied half a decade ago when he blazed the campaign trail with staccato, cacophonous speech patterns and awkward catchphrases. His presentation is electric and wry and above all, objective. Mr. Gore's sense of humor is well executed in his film and evanesces any fear that a movie about global warming cannot be heart wrenching, cannot be thrilling, cannot be the most important film of our generation.

The world we live in is rotting from the inside out. Whether it be Generation Y becoming the next baby boomers and tripling the population of the world in just fifty short years, whether it be the fossil fuels that we insist on burning when there are handfuls of alternatives, whether it be the total disregard for the natural order of things and waging internal and foreign wars with no silver lining, whether it be the cancers or the natural disasters of the world that unremittingly hammer away at civilization, there is no denying that we are facing hard times. Believe it or not, ten of the hottest years on record have all fallen within the past fourteen years, 2005 being the hottest. A one degree Fahrenheit temperature change in the United States is a twelve-degree change at the poles. The movie is peppered with statistics and percentages and experiments that all lend to a gloomy future. The movie wrangles every nethermost corner of doubt or suspicion or devil's advocating, dissects it, studies the anatomy of it, picks it apart, mutilates it, desecrates it, riddles it with a hundred and twenty-seven bullets, and finally, delivers the eulogy at it's funeral.

Taking action against Global Warming reminds me of voting. One person cannot make a difference, but if everyone had that mentality, than no difference would ever be made, no progress, no change. Everyone has to have faith that they are making a difference, one person at a time. Everyone has to have faith that they will inspire others, that they are sacrificing their own convenience for the standards of living of their children, of civilization. Everyone has to have faith that eventually enough people will lock arms and speak out that General Motors will rectify car emission standards, that the body politic will put a restriction on Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, that the oil companies will put away their guns and let research yield a more efficient and renewable energy. This film, this threat isn't partisan fear mongering. When ice drills take core samples of the Arctic tundra, there is a point where the ice looks cleaner, less gritty and polluted. One of the machine operators throws a haphazard glance at the ice and says, "That's when Congress passed the 'Clean Air Act.'" Legislation does make a difference. This one nation under God can change the course of history. This is a problem we could solve if we wanted to, if we had any willpower or resolution, if we had morals, if we had shame about having the lowest standards in the world, about being scoffed at for our gas-guzzling, Carbon Dioxide spewing American-made automobiles, about being one of two countries to abandon Kyoto, about being the largest contributor to this problem and offering least in the way of reparations. The message is dire, but ultimately hopeful. Sure it's a real-life disaster picture, but the worst is yet to come, and what is yet to come is entirely up to us.

As long as Guggenheim keeps his cameras trained on Gore and his teaching aides, "An Inconvenient Truth" packs a wallop, grabbing you by the throat and never once loosening its grip. I feel somewhat embarrassed to disclose this, but there were scenes when I was moved to tears, frustrated by the apathy, by Reagan blaming Carbon Dioxide pollution on the trees, by Daddy Bush claiming that if the threat were real, the country would be full of owls and jobs would be put in limbo, frustrated by his son's empty promises and self-devouring logic. What a different country we would live in had the victor in 2000 actually been victorious. The presentation takes an intermission between slides and Gore narrates his off-stage life, the history of things, how he was bestowed with his frame of reference, his tidings in foreign lands. These scenes are extraneous, but they are mere tributaries in the plot that function more as bookmarks, serving as the necessary denouement to the previous clip's climax. Surprisingly enough, in addition to Gore's brief explanation of the mechanics of global warming, " Futurama's" also made a debut. There is nothing disputable or left in the balance in the confines of this film. Just as when the Surgeon General spoke out against cigarettes for the first time and the tobacco industry called it a hoax, this film has its fair share of critics. This is a film where the message is more important than the man, and I think people forget that. Melissa Etheridge wrote the title track for this documentary, called " I Need To Wake Up," and I have never heard a more heartfelt song about any subject matter, and I felt the gearshift that Al Gore makes reference to. All ticket sales from "An Inconvenient Truth" go to the "Stop Global Warming Fund," and I hope everyone will go see it.