An Inconvenient Truth: None Like It Hot!

In all my life I have never seen a movie that could bore the living daylights out of me, but at the same time intrigue and open my eyes; and that is an inconvenient truth. I could not truly believe that I was watching a serious documentary about how our fossil fuelled lifestyles are eventually leading to Earths unfortunate demise. Because to me what I was watch was a sort of serial chat show style set up; in which Al Gore presented his slide show with detail and graphs about climate change, Co2 levels and greenhouse gases. Then out of nowhere he would say something really intelligent which had an added joke inserted in it, which amused the audience bringing them to life, then silence would fall as the chat show set up had broken into a documentary sequence.

An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary film like in the style of March of the Penguins, but with defiantly a lot less ice, directed by Davis Guggenheim. The film is about the former U.S Vice President Al Gore whose campaign to educate people about the effects of global warming. This film is not an action film like I thought it would be, but involves Al Gore presenting a presentation on climate change and what will happen to Earth. It is broken up between snippets of slideshow and film clips; where he talks about how global warming plays apart in his own life from education to family.

With the understanding of the nub and jist of the film I can begin to reflect on it; it’s overall message, how it’s presented, my overall view of the film and what I think the audience would have thought.
The films messages have complexities attached to them; In my opinion the messages are trying to open the audiences eyes; not in a “shut down all the factorise or the Earth gets it” type of way, nor is it saying “oh don’t worry, when the Co2 levels get really bad we will figure something out” kind of way. Though the first message that I personally picked up on was “as the citizens of this Earth this is what we are doing to it and boy we don’t really want a happy future do we?”. It’s showing to us the levels of danger that we could come into contact with if we don’t start sorting ourselves out, but in a way that immediately catches our attention. For example Al Gore uses examples from 650,000 years of Co2 levels against temperature. Where at first he explains that yes there has been in the past a natural global warming and cooling of the Earth, but the Co2 level had never reached over 300 parts per million, until people became more modern and screwed up Earths natural system. This screwing up of the Earth’s natural system has resulted in the succession of Co2 levels exceeding the 300 part per million level, which Al Gore then emphasises or to put as he said “exzardgerates” through the use of a cherry picker how far predations can compute Co2 levels will be in the next 50 years. This message comes in the form of a dark joke which says “ha ha yeah that sure is funny how he has to use a cherry picker to show how high Co2 levels will be, but hang on; if Co2 is related to temperature… we are going to roast, that’s not funny anymore”, and throughout the part of the film that I watched this sort of eye opening dark comic intellectual humour continues. With a message like this being showed off to the audience, it is a hazy and in some places a complex one to understand, this is because in my opinion the main message is climate change and how it is going to affect us but it is covered up by scientific explanations and jokes.

When deciding whether this approach of portraying the message in the form of in-depth scientific fact and humour is a double edged sword; this is because the message can be interpreted in two ways. The first way of interpreting it is by only seeing the facts, which in my opinion where blown out of proportion and emphasised a bit too much, which can quite easily lead people down the path of panic if miss interpreted. Whereas other people may only see the humours side of what is being said; only listening to and remembering the jokes and comments made around the scientific facts, which can lead to ignorance to what is truly happen, thus the appropriateness of how the message was approached depends on how the person watching the message interprets it.

Within the docufilm when it comes to determining whether the information in the film is the right information it is difficult to say because I don’t know if what is right for one person could be wrong for another, but in my opinion from seeing half of the film the information was sufficient for a main stream audience.  An example of some of the information given by Al Gore was that there are assumptions “that just ain’t so” in which people say that “that the Earth is so big we can’t have any lasting harmful impact on the Earth’s environment” (An Inconvenient Truth, 2006). But he sets the record straight by saying that we are affecting the Earth’s atmosphere which is so vulnerable because of how thin it is. This snippet of information about the Earth’s atmosphere may not contain the right amount of information, but if Al Gore went into depth with it, he could end up losing the point he was talking about and the audience. But a question that springs to mind is well isn’t all this in that GCSE geography textbook I had to read? Yes it is, but I do not think that a middle aged person read that one, so is having a look at this film for guidance, thus the information is relevant for them. 

Some of the information in the film may be right for different people but that does not matter if it is too technical, boring or leaves views confused. Though in my opinion the film is not too technical, it does not contain large amounts of numbers and scientific explanation like what some other documentaries cover, which means that a wide range of age groups and academic abilities are able to understand what is going on. Al Gore uses simplified methods of explaining how global warming occurs though the medium of images and graphics; he begins to explain the process of global warming with the usual textbook description such as in the book New Key Geography for GCSE (Waugh, D. and Bushell, T. 2002). Then into a more simplified comical explanation and between the two explanations even my 11 year old sister and my 9 year old brother could understand global warming; thus if children are able to explain the basic nub and jist of what the film is trying to explain, then it can’t be that technical. When looking into how boring the film is, it wins this round hands down; it is boring. Though credit needs to be given where it is due; yes the film is boring but as I have mentioned before it is eye opening in many ways. When I was watching the film especially during the part where Al Gore discussed the depletion of global ice coverage, my mouth just dropped I am sure I was  catching flies, because to me ice caps have always been so impressive and to see such a large magnificent creation just wither away shocks me, though I know that they are melting, seeing the images just makes it seem so much more real. Now when it comes to being confused whilst watching a documentary, for me at times it is inevitable but whilst watching An Inconvenient Truth confused was not part of my state of mind; the film to me was straight forward, Al Gore had laid it out by explaining global warming, how it is created, what it causes, such as increased natural hazards like hurricanes and droughts and explains what will happen in the future.

However I may be seeing the film in a too simplified light or just giving it too much credit, for the movie itself may be too simple treating views as children using only the tip of the iceberg of information. I say this because, the information as I had mentioned before can be found in a textbook or educational websites such as BBC Bitesize or in a newspaper for example information can be found on The Guardian online. The film explains how global warming is created through solar rays being trapped inside the Earth’s atmosphere, but then goes onto showing a clip from the TV program Futurama. This raises the question is it right to use a cartoon that doesn’t explain global warming in enough detail to make a coach potato sit up scratch there head and say “I should be worried about that”? Patronising the viewer is what this film does not have many elements of doing, Al Gore is not phonetically spelling out the word “Gu-Lu-Oh-Ba-All—Wa-Oor-Mm-Ing”, instead he is making his explanations simple enough to understand, but not so difficult to make the viewer feel stupid.

Though the views that I have given on the film An inconvenient Truth are what I personally think, others may see it completely differently, or in the case of the BBC movie review on this film some may agree with me. The BBC says that “An Inconvenient Truth, is not a drama or even a documentary. It's a slide show, delivered to a live audience, on the subject of the environment. Doesn't sound too thrilling, does it? And in truth, it ain't Die Hard. But be assured: this a really really good slide show”.
Whilst other people have an entirely different view to mine, such as those found on the site rottentomatoes.com which include reviews such as “has its heart in the right place but overall the film stands as a one-track doomsday warning with too little substance to achieve its intended effect” by Dustin Putman from dustinputman.com and “no matter how much generosity critics and activists show this movie, it is still a boring slideshow by a boring speaker with cool graphics and thus, a boring movie” by David Poland from Movie City News. But as I stated before people will interpret how they see the film and its message differently, and the opinions of others does not sway my own, for I see the film as a great movie, but in terms of how good it is as a tool to promote awareness about climate change and environmental sustainability in general, I’m still on the fence.

For the film An Inconvenient Truth to be a tool for promoting awareness about climate change it would need to connect with people from all walks of life. For example if I was not told to watch this film I probably would have not because I don’t usually go for that type of movie, I like chick flicks but also because I thought it was an action film I avoided it, but I know now that I was wrongly informed. The film also has trouble in my opinion at being a tool because when it does get shown to people they may instantly forget about it, for it is not hard hitting enough to be imbedded into peoples memory, thus doesn’t really promote awareness if people watch it but don’t see it. People need for something to either happen to them personally or to shock them to their core or the global destructiveness won’t get through to the middle class office worker who only worries for the day are “I wonder what’s for dinner and did I remember to feed the cat?”. Also to add, as the reviews had stated beforehand to some people the movie was boring, so do you really think they are going to remember it for its global awareness points?


The film doesn’t manage to promote awareness about climate change to its full potential as it had been continuously bashed by scientists saying that some of the information is wrong or blown out of proportion. The BBC may have given the film the thumbs up but it also found nine 'errors'. For example “Mr Gore's assertion that a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of ice in either West Antarctica or Greenland "in the near future". The judge said this was "distinctly alarmist" and it was common ground that if Greenland's ice melted it would release this amount of water - "but only after, and over, millennia"”. With such negative remarks it can make people see the film as a dramatisation thus leading them to taking the information included in the film with a pinch of salt. However the film could be acting as a tool for creating awareness; it could be the push that some people need, to see that global warming is actually happening and is a real thing.

Even so, to conclude, in my opinion An Inconvenient Truth is one of those films that is not going to be everybody’s cup of tea, for it has an acquired taste, to one person it may be as tasteful as boiled socks to another it’s the cats pyjamas. The film brings the subject of climate change and global warming to the table quite neatly and the message is clear” this is climate change and this is what is going to happen because of it” with enough added information to not confuse or patronise the average Joe, but to bring about an awareness with whit and scientific fact at it's side. Though the film has been slapped around the face a few times by those in the know, it has managed to capture the attention off the girl who fell asleep watching March of the Penguins and has the theme tune to Sex and the City the Movie as her ringtone.