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Movie Review Why Worry?
By ARUNDHATI DAS To view the article in magazine format,
Please click here for the PDF File  The Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth jolts our conscience on what we take for granted. A message simply conveyed. A warning sounded loud and clear, devoid of proselytizing, with conviction. An Inconvenient Truth is served without sugar coating or any intention to generate panic. The facts are startling enough, the narration pithy. The prospect of reviewing this documentary brought no rush of eagerness, despite the buzz created by its Academy Award, and its featuring of Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president. There was no denying the niggling sense of being subjected to an afternoon of solemn warnings, the sorry tale of global warming increasingly relegated to the yawn pages of local dailies. Five minutes into the documentary, the misgivings were replaced by a sense of bewilderment and awe. Bewilderment at the devastating and irrefutable evidence on the extent of damage done to the environment; awe at the elaborate canvas of inter-related fallouts of the wanton acts of a generation devoted to pursuing industrialization. The painstakingly collated information and the telling images-of erratic climate patterns, unexplained resurgence of dormant diseases, rise in the vectors for infectious diseases, and the increasing instances of hurricanes, floods and droughts-effectively bring home the urgency, leaving little room for cynicism. Even if one were to dismiss the claims as the bluster of a politician, there is no ignoring the shrinking glaciers, melting ice caps, disappearing rivers, humans afflicted by killer diseases, and millions of acres of green cover falling prey to marauding bugs. There is simply no ignoring the message: "When the warnings are accurate and based on sound science, then we as human beings, whatever country we live in, have to find a way to make sure that the warnings are heard and responded to." Respond, rather than just react, is what echoes throughout. Raising a number of questions rather than merely serving up the answers, the film jolts the conscience. "Are you ready to change the way you live?" And more pointedly: "Are we Americans capable of doing difficult?things?" Tongue-in-cheek: "We have everything, save perhaps political will. But in America, political will is a renewable resource." Gore's candor is refreshing: "Ultimately, this is not a political issue so much as a moral issue." Arundhati Das is assistant editor of a journal in New Delhi. |
