The 11th Hour isn't flashy like the BBC's stunning Planet Earth series, nor even folksy like Al Gore's slideshow in the Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth.
But it is an earnest, thoughtful documentary.
Almost to a fault. A sombre Leonardo DiCaprio produced and co-wrote the film and plays host-narrator. So he is being his real-life eco-activist self.
But he's a downer, just like the potentially catastrophic truth he is selling with such determination. Davis Guggenheim helped coax out Gore's surprising sense of humour and his humanity in An Inconvenient Truth. The same approach would have brightened up The 11th Hour without compromising its content.
On that content level, however, The 11th Hour operates at a high level of science and social politics. The information is generally offered in layman's terms without too much jargon. Nothing much that is said is really new -- not if you do your own independent research into Earth sciences -- but it gathers the information together with a fierce determination.
Because the film is so well grounded, deniers who dismiss it as the lunatic ravings of granola crunchers are either idiots or they are deliberately trying to obscure the long-range big picture for short-term gain.
In the film, DiCaprio introduces a clutch of scientists and environmental commentators -- including articulate Canadian biologist David Suzuki, former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev and famed British mathematician Stephen Hawking -- who plunge into whole-earth issues.
They take the climate crisis debate out to a broader spectrum than in An Inconvenient Truth and layer in other complex issues.
As a result, the film examines the degradation of entire ecosystems because of desperate, selfish or ignorant human behaviour.
DiCaprio and company also raise the faint hope we humans have to reverse the doomsday clock. The emphasis is on sustainable lifestyles, not on unfettered economic growth and fossil fuel dependency that compromises and may destroy Planet Earth.
The 11th Hour was co-written and co-directed by two filmmaking sisters who are devoted to environmental causes. Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners worked with DiCaprio on two short films, Global Warming and Water Planet. The new feature-length film, which made its debut at Cannes in May, was a logical next step.
The film juxtaposes images of global landscape -- most of them disturbing or even horrifying, even when they are beautiful -- with talking heads. The quick cuts are dizzying at times, like Koyaanisqatsi without the visual poetry and New Age music score. The 11th Hour will require repeat viewings, especially on a future DVD, for full comprehension.
In tone, the talking heads move from mostly negative news and insight into the slim optimism of the closing section, which emphasizes far-reaching and yet logical solutions.
This approach, and the film's tight editing and brisk running time, makes it ideal as an educational document for classroom study.
But it will also bring out the skeptics who accuse eco-activists of either hectoring or preaching to the converted.
That is another form of denial, a refusal to actually discuss the issues. If The 11th Hour does anything -- and it does a lot -- it at least sharpens the debate. And that is crucial if we are to survive this mortal coil.
(This film is rated PG)
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