Important new film from Al Gore, "a living symbol of what might have been"

[DeepModem Mom]

The New Yorker: COMMENT
OZONE MAN
by David Remnick
Issue of 2006-04-24

The imminence of catastrophic global warming may be a subject far from the ever-drifting mind of President Bush—whose eschatological preoccupations privilege Armageddon over the Flood—but it is of growing concern to the rest of humanity. Climate change is even having its mass-entertainment moment. “Ice Age: The Meltdown”—featuring Ellie the computer-animated mammoth and the bottomless voice of Queen Latifah—has taken in more than a hundred million dollars at the box office in two weeks. On the same theme, but with distinctly less animation, “An Inconvenient Truth,” starring Al Gore (playing the role of Al Gore, itinerant lecturer), is coming to a theatre near you around Memorial Day. Log on to Fandango. Reserve some seats. Bring the family. It shouldn’t be missed. No kidding.

“An Inconvenient Truth” is not likely to displace the boffo numbers of “Ice Age” in Variety’s weekly grosses. It is, to be perfectly honest (and there is no way of getting around this), a documentary film about a possibly retired politician giving a slide show about the dangers of melting ice sheets and rising sea levels. It has a few lapses of mise en scène. Sometimes we see Gore gravely talking on his cell phone—or gravely staring out an airplane window, or gravely tapping away on his laptop in a lonely hotel room—for a little longer than is absolutely necessary. And yet, as a means of education, “An Inconvenient Truth” is a brilliantly lucid, often riveting attempt to warn Americans off our hellbent path to global suicide. “An Inconvenient Truth” is not the most entertaining film of the year. But it might be the most important.

The catch, of course, is that the audience-of-one that most urgently needs to see the film and take it to heart—namely, the man who beat Gore in the courts six years ago—does not much believe in science or, for that matter, in any information that disturbs his prejudices, his fantasies, or his sleep. Inconvenient truths are precisely what this White House is structured to avoid and deny.

In the 1992 campaign against Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush mocked Gore as “ozone man” and claimed, “This guy is so far out in the environmental extreme we’ll be up to our necks in owls and outta work for every American.” In the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush cracked that Gore “likes electric cars. He just doesn’t like making electricity.” The younger Bush, a classic schoolyard bully with a contempt for intellect, demanded that Gore “explain what he meant by some of the things” in his 1992 book, “Earth in the Balance”—and then unashamedly admitted that he had never read it....If you are inclined to think that the unjustly awarded election of 2000 led to one of the worst Presidencies of this or any other era, it is not easy to look at Al Gore. He is the living reminder of all that might not have happened in the past six years....It is past time to recognize that, over a long career, his policy judgment and his moral judgment alike have been admirable and acute. Gore has been right about global warming since holding the first congressional hearing on the topic, twenty-six years ago. He was right about the role of the Internet, right about the need to reform welfare and cut the federal deficit, right about confronting Slobodan Milosevic in Bosnia and Kosovo. Since September 11th, he has been right about constitutional abuse, right about warrantless domestic spying, and right about the calamity of sanctioned torture. And in the case of Iraq, both before the invasion and after, he was right—courageously right—to distrust as fatally flawed the political and moral good faith, operational competence, and strategic wisdom of the Bush Administration.... There is no substitute for Presidential power, but Gore is now playing a unique role in public life. He is a symbol of what might have been, who insists that we focus on what likely will be an uninhabitable planet if we fail to pay attention to the folly we are committing, and take the steps necessary to end it.

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/talk/060424ta_talk_remnick

[Brigid]

1. Gore

Gore is indeed a symbol of what might have been. I have seen him on C-SPAN a few times since the debacle of 2000, speaking on different topics, and I get mad all over again at how he was treated. He's not Mr. Charisma, but he's articulate and well-informed. The Bush camp made him out to be a bumbling fool -- well, guess what -- we've been stuck with a bumbling fool for the past six years, with still a few more to go. *sigh*

[Erika]

2. The right wing nuts chose to see him as wooden

He is a great intellectual and American patriot. While W will be the worst president in America. W is a globalist corporatist, with zero allegiance to American workers, and less allegiance to our poor.

[Lisa]

9. if "charisma" means putting on a phony swagger, and manipulating people

... which is what the supposedly likeable/charismatic George W. seems to be doing these days ... quite frankly, I can do without it!

Democratic societies, one would hope, would be sophisticated enough to look behind facades, and insist on substance rather than fakery. I mean, Hitler and Stalin were thought to be charismatic, and that didn't turn out well!

[lostexpectation]

3. Yes imagine how much of those policies he would had to drop to get in

to office... :P

[argyl]

4. He campaigned on these policies and won the popular vote.Florida was

stolen by Catherine Harris and Jeb and the theft was validated by the SCOTUS.

Maybe you're just being facetious...

[lostexpectation]

5. yes i meant

imagine all these policies he would have dropped once he got into office.

[argyl]

6. If espousing these policies won him office why would he drop them upon

assuming the presidency?

[lostexpectation]

7. politics 101

even for those holy dems

[argyl]

8. "Those"holy dems? You sure you're in the right place, buddy?

[Uncle Joe]

10. It looks like you have lost your expectations, come back to the light.

The problem with your hypothesis is that while you may be thinking of politics 101, Al Gore is operating on a P.H.D. level.

[Lindacooks]

11. Geez, how come nobody recommended this post? I can't now

it's been more than 24 hours.

[MethuenProgressive]

12. posted earlier today on another thread:

-----------
Al Gore, Sundance's Leading Man
'An Inconvenient Truth' Documents His Efforts To Raise Alarm on Effects of Global Warming

By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer


PARK CITY, Utah -- Has ever a little indie film faced a greater hurdle? Imagine this sales pitch: Babe, it's a movie about global warming. Starring Al Gore. Doing a slide show.

With charts.

About "soil evaporation."

Improbable? Perhaps. So it's all the more amazing that "An Inconvenient Truth" had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Tuesday night before an enthusiastic audience that gave the former vice president and his movie a big standing O.

Among the film's lessons: Earth's glaciers are melting, the polar bears are screwed, each year sets new heat records. Al Gore sometimes flies coach. He also schleps his own bags.

The morning after his debut as leading man, Gore pronounces this whole Sundance thing "a most excellent time." He is wearing earth tones again. He seems jolly . He brought Tipper and the kids. He is attending parties and posing for pictures with his fans and enjoying macaroni and cheese at the Discovery Channel soiree. He's palling around with Larry David of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," who says, "Al is a funny guy." But he is also a very serious guy who believes humans may have only 10 years left to save the planet from turning into a total frying pan.

The core of the film is a one-man, ever-evolving multimedia slide show that Gore assembled himself. A little-known fact: Since his defeat by George W. Bush in 2000, Gore has traveled the globe with his bar graphs, staging event after event for small, invited audiences. Free of charge. And he's presented one version or another of this slide show, by his own estimation, a thousand times.

The official Sundance Film Festival guide calls the documentary a "gripping story" with "a visually mesmerizing presentation" that is "activist cinema at its very best."

In the film, Gore presents the latest evidence to demonstrate how the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other pollutants of the industrial age are increasing temperatures. In addition to timelines and bell curves and stuff about oxygen isotopes in Greenland ice cores, Gore includes several cartoons, one featuring a Mister Sunbeam trapped by the bullies known as Greenhouse Gases.

Gore argues -- with scientific evidence projected on big screens at his back -- that global warming may soon lead to catastrophic sea level rises, which could inundate cities such as New York (flooding the former site of the World Trade Center), producing scary nonlinear runaway spasms of extreme weather (bigger, badder hurricanes and typhoons), global pandemics and, depending on where you live, torrential rains or decade-long drought. It is not a pretty picture.

"I'm interested in choices characters make, especially when they hit against an obstacle," says Guggenheim as Gore sits beside him during an interview yesterday morning. "As I got into Al's story, I see a human being who's made some tough, tough choices in his life. After the 2000 election? To go back deeper and deeper into this issue? To decide that it is the most important thing he can do. . . . I see how tireless he is. That, to me, is so dramatic, so inspiring.".