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An Inconvenient Truth

2006, Movie, PG, 100 mins

An Inconvenient Truth: Review

INCONVENIENT TRUTH, AN
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Released hard on the heels of the Canadian documentary THE GREAT WARMING (2006), this 95-minute lecture also warns that the fate of the Earth has never been less certain. Which is not to say that its star, former Vice President Al Gore, is a Johnny-come-lately: Gore, who sardonically introduces himself as the man who "used to be the next president of the United States," was introduced to the disturbing relationship between increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature as a Harvard student in the late 1960s by geochemist Roger Revelle, whose pioneering research laid the groundwork for current thinking on the subject. Gore has been lecturing about the coming environmental crisis since 1989 (he has, by his own estimate, delivered this presentation more than 1,000 times in locations ranging from San Francisco to Shanghai), and wrote the impassioned Earth in the Balance in 1992. As a film, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH falls somewhere between an auditorium survey class and a stump speech, and if it covers no new ground, it benefits greatly from Gore's air of educated sobriety and principled rectitude (something WARMING narrators Keanu Reeves and Alanis Morissette lack), which makes his observation that a survey of recent weather patterns is like a "nature hike through the Book of Revelation" sound alarming rather than alarmist. Gore's lecture covers the undeniable byproducts of an ever-warmer planet, from melting ice caps and rising seas to escalating storms and ever-more-parching droughts. He calls for a bipartisan effort to stop the escalation and reduce the damage already done. For someone whose political career — which began with his election to Congress in 1976 and apparently ended in 2000, when he lost the presidential election to George W. Bush — was defined by the perception that he was a wooden wonk, Gore the green crusader is himself a revelation. If not a born performer, he's remade himself as a strong communicator who can condense complicated material without reducing it to sound bites and use terms like "moral imperative" without sounding insincere or proscriptive. Gore looks as energized and purposeful as Mother Earth looks sickly and mad as hell, which is no doubt why many commentators suggested it was less an environmental action statement than a test balloon for future political ambitions; it would be a shame if such speculation were to detract from its message. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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