feeling listless

Film There’s a certain redundancy about the Leonardo Di Caprio produced environmental polemic The 11th Hour in that all of the messages were already communicated by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth and far more coherently. Indeed, many of the same charts even appear in this film, rather smaller, better animated and on screen for a seconds and though the message, that the world is broken unless we can convince our leaders to do something about it, for some reason this barrage of scientists make a less convincing case than the a former next President of the United States. The overall impression is of Adam Curtis (The Power of Nightmares) remaking a Godfrey Reggio film (Koyaanisqatsi) interspersing the shots of landscapes and cities and death with vignettes from Richard Linklater’s Waking Life before the animation was applied.

Unlike the Gore film, there’s no respite from the statistics and shouting, as face after face, archive clip on archive clip shuffle through, rarely giving the viewer a chance to take stock before some other apocalyptic vision is introduced. The previous slide show was paced by pertinent dips into Al’s biography, explaining why the environmental cause is important to him and so how it should be important to us. Here, the only relief is in some scenic pieces to camera by Leo himself standing on the edge of what looks like the Grand Canyon, doubtless attempting to use his star power to attract those who might otherwise be disaffected. But there’s little levity and though the film ends on a positive note, with contributions from companies apparently winning the environmental fight the overall impression is that Big Oil will win in the end. That doesn't seem fair does it?