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THE 11TH HOUR
Directed by: Leila Conners Petersen & Nadia Conners.
Produced by: Leonardo DiCaprio, Petersen, Brian Gerber & Chuck Castleberry.
Written by: Petersen & Conners.
Director of Photography: Peter Youngblood Hills, Andrew Rowland & Brian Knappenberger.
Edited by: Pietro Scalia & Luis Alvarez & Alvarez.
Music by: Jean Pascal Beintus & Eric Avery.
Released by: Warner Independent Pictures.
Country of Origin: USA. 91 min. Rated PG.
Narrated by: Leonardo DiCaprio.

Without a doubt, An Inconvenient Truth, fronted by Al Gore, set the mark high for producer/narrator Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary The 11th Hour. The star doesn’t just echo the former vice president’s wake-up call. Both films deliver the same warnings in unison; Gore and DiCaprio probably wouldn’t have it any other way. The more you sound the alarm, the better – one solution to global warming that both films propose. And it’s not for nothing that the films spend considerable time debunking concerns about the environment as merely Henny Penny “Sky is falling” fretting.

But in too many ways, the new film recycles the other: apocalyptic scenes of the weather gone wild; the melting of the Arctic ice; the relocation of precipitation; deforestation, etc. DiCaprio’s star power probably propelled this film into release, even though Gore has stolen much of his thunder.

Unfairly, many characterized Truth as just a PowerPoint presentation with great cinematography. Yet it’s one of the most personal documentaries in recent years, covering Gore’s rebound from his 2000 electoral defeat as well as the loss of his sister, a lifelong smoker, to lung cancer (tobacco was one of the bumper crops on his family’s farm). His tone of regret adds a galvanizing, personal quality, notably missing from The 11th Hour, a densely thorough and exhaustive talking-head gabfest.

DiCaprio’s film does tackle today’s consumer-mad culture and its disconnection from nature, and, more pointedly than Truth, condemns the oil industry as the leading culprit for the greenhouse gas effect. (Don’t expect to see a Mobil-sponsored airing on PBS). Although a few of the insights are touchy-feely (“We’ve lost the beauty of the world”), the interviewees can’t be written off as the whining, loony left: mathematician Stephen Hawking and former director of the CIA, James Woolsey, are among the dozens sounding the alarm. But if your attention wanders, you’ll miss part of its full agenda. With no highs or lows, the film drags from crisis to crisis.

Unfortunately, The 11th Hour clearly sidesteps the controversial matter of population (birth) control, even as it points out that the total number of earth’s inhabitants has exploded from two billion in 1930 to over six billion today. And missing another opportunity to really explore new ideas, the coda rushes through possible solutions – a waste-free industrial system, new methods of manufacturing, taxing polluters – coming across as too pat after the previous inundation of facts and figures. Kent Turner
August 17, 2007