I saw The 11th Hour last night, a new movie produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio. The movie is a pastiche of interviews of about 50 different thinkers and scientists, interspersed with stock footage of obligatory mountains and seal clubbings. Here’s how Leonardo describes it:
Some of my thoughts, which do not add up to a review:
While the movie is going to get attention because of Leonardo’s star power, he’s not the star at all. Some of the featured experts were incredibly compelling: Steven Schneider of Stanford, for one. Paul Hawken and Michael Gelobter of Redefining Progress were great, and David Suzuki stole the show. To the extent the movie has a metanarrative, I think David provided it, with (and this is a rough approximation):
Save the environment? The environment is going to be just fine. It’s the people we need to worry about.
And while much of the movie was depressing as hell, Paul Hawken had a different take. Again, loosely transcribed, here’s Paul:
What an exciting time to be alive. All human systems are so bankrupt that they all need to be redesigned if we are to survive. How fun!
Give it a look. This is not another An Inconvenient Truth. That movie sought to inform. It seems odd to say of a documentary featuring mostly fixed camera interviews, but this film is not at all cerebral. Instead, it goes for the heart. I’ll be very curious to see what kind of audience it finds.
