Review: An Inconvenient Truth Cast: Al Gore Directed by: Davis Guggenheim Former US Vice President, Al Gore wants us to acknowledge a harsh reality - humankind has entered an “era of consequences”. As he travels around the world evoking his brand of environmental enlightenment, Gore (not to be confused with Gore Vidal, prolific US novelist and intellectual, who regularly comments on issues such as US Imperialism) is kind of like a Yankee Doodle Gorbachev - a former world leader with a chip on his shoulder and an environmental message to convey. Gore presents the thesis that planet earth is the midst of a climate crisis in a hyper-scholarly format, sans interpreter, and on celluloid in An Inconvenient Truth. His magnetic matinee-idol looks and dazzling array of wizz bang graphs, humorous cartoons and scientific data should charm the most blinkered soul and ruffle our collective consciousness. Directed by David Guggenheim, An Inconvenient Truth weaves between a number of parallel journeys. Gore traveling here and there while he works upon his laptop (by the way, Gore is on the Board of Apple Computer), a catalogue of personal reminiscences such as his childhood on the family tobacco farm, and his recollection of conversations with fellow environmentalists and scientists such as Carl Sagan. Paramount Classics From the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to the melting polar ice caps, An Inconvenient Truth illustrates how the earth's weather patterns have been irrevocably altered since the industrial age began. Yet despite these terrible truths and Gore's prescription to remedy the situation, there's an eerie absence of any reference to the role of US military aggression or to his stance on nuclear energy. And though his family stopped farming tobacco following the cancer death of Gore's elder sister Nancy, they owned shares in Occidental (Oxy) until six years ago when his father's estate was closed. Gore says that international interest in protecting the environment crystallized when the first images of our lonely little planet were beamed back to earth from Apollo 13. Whether An Inconvenient Truth can inform public opinion about global warming, and rejuvenate our jaded environmental awareness remains to be seen. In any case, it's excellent publicity if all that speculation turns out to be true, and an inconvenient truth turns into a convenient segue to a 2008 US Presidential campaign! Review by Megan Yarrow

 

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