a couple of months ago, when the sundance film festival was going on and i was reading some of the press reports as they dribbled out, i kept seeing references to the unlikely hit of the festival. as the articles described it, it was a documentary that was mostly just al gore giving a power-point presentation about global warming. the people who saw it said it was surprisingly captivating. i made a mental note to myself to check out the film if i ever got the chance.
earlier in the week, i got wind of a special sneak preview screening of the film was coming to philadelphia and that al gore himself would be holding a question and answer at the end. my friend dave had an extra ticket, and so i managed to join a relatively small group of local big-wigs to see an inconvenient truth last night.
the film was mostly as i heard it described from the sundance press. the entire film is in al gore's voice and for almost all of it, he's on a stage giving a presentation about global warming. this is a presentation that gore has been doing live around the world since he left politics after the 2000 election. the thing that made the film a success is just how captivating the presentation itself was. it was detailed, with data and charts, but also really interesting. at least i thought so. i went into the film a little drowsy, but the presentation was compelling enough to keep me awake.
interspersed throughout the presentation were little vignettes about al gore's life, e.g. growing up in tennessee, how he discovered the issue of global warming, and a bit about his political career. i thought those bits were less interesting. sometimes they fit in to the overall narrative of the global warming presentation. but for a few it was hard to see a connection. one of the vignettes, about how gore's sister died of lung cancer, i had seen before when i attended the democratic national convention in 1996. the film was semi-successful in spinning that particular story to relate it to the global warming presentation. but when i recognized the story i realized what the vignettes reminded me of, those short biographical videos they play during the national conventions. i'm not really a fan of the videos, and i wish they had left at least half of the vignettes out of "an inconvenient truth." as dave as we were leaving the theater, "i would have rather just seen gore's whole power-point presentation."
on the other hand, dave's sentiment reflects just how interesting gore's presentation is. and that presentation takes up a good 90-95% of the film. which makes it well worth seeing. i recommend you catch it whenever you get the chance. it's opening commercially in philadelphia on june 2nd. see it opening weekend and bring five friends.
the question and answer session at the end was also fairly interesting. local celebrity pierre robert asked the first question echoed joe klein's charge that gore de-emphasized his environmentalism during the 2000 campaign at the urging of his political advisors. gore denied that he de-emphasized anything during the campaign, claiming instead that a national presidential campaign has to be about more than one issue.
meanwhile, for all my pride at scoring a bunch of super-exclusive tickets, a bunch of other people i knew ended up there. i was supposed to save mr. and mrs. atrios seats, only to discover that they had their own reserved seats already cordoned off for them in the back. hydromuse was also there and as was susie.*
susie's review is here
atrios' review is here (i didn't notice it before because i mixed up all the "rover" titles)
dave's review is here
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* full disclosure: susie gave me some goobers while we were waiting for the film to begin. nevertheless my links to her site in this post were in no way related to any chocolaty goodness that may or may not have changed hands in the theater.
