Yet watching Gore present graphs and data to rooms full of people who want to advocate on behalf of sustainable energy efforts around the world, it’s hard not to grow cynical. Al Gore believes in educating people with the facts. Winsomely educating the public, presenting the right data, showing striking images: Gore seems convinced that is the way forward toward a more stable global environment. The result is more of a portrait of a man than anything else - but a man who is stubbornly certain of the power of information. Occasionally Gore talks directly to the camera, but for the most part we’re following him around as he engages in his work: sitting with his staff, giving presentations on climate change at seminars, traveling the world, and even wading into floodwaters in Miami alongside the city’s mayor.
The movie uses a cinéma vérité style of filmmaking that is, directors Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk largely operate as flies on the wall. After seven months of waking up every morning to new evidence that the word “facts” no longer has an agreed-upon definition, An Inconvenient Sequel feels more like part of the ongoing trend toward nostalgia cinema. However, it no longer, as I’d written in January, felt “good” to be reminded that “someone still believes” in the importance of facts. It’s a follow-up to An Inconvenient Truth, equal parts a recap of what’s happened since then - both extreme weather events around the world and efforts to move toward affordable sustainable energy - and a reflection on Gore’s feelings about the progress of his cause. There’s also more text at the end, detailing the US’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement and calling the audience to action.īut on balance, it’s still the same movie. There’s a bit more Trump foreshadowing (via footage or audio of candidate Trump talking about his disdain for the idea of climate change), and a minute or two of further on-camera reflection from Gore following Trump’s election.
An Inconvenient Sequel hasn’t changed substantially since its premiere in JanuaryĪs far as I can tell, not much has changed in An Inconvenient Sequel since its Sundance debut. If watching the film in January felt weird, watching it in July was outright bizarre, verging on surreal. So on a Tuesday afternoon in July, I went to a screening room in Times Square to rewatch the film, which was tweaked slightly after Sundance to include a little more footage of Trump’s statements on the environment during his campaign and a small amount of reflection on the state of climate activism after his election. He’s done this while also directly confronting previous US policy on climate change through Cabinet appointments and, most notably, withdrawing the US from the Paris agreement, where the film’s climactic moments are set. In the months since his inauguration, Trump has made it his mission to undermine as much as possible any remaining notions of shared consensus. In the case of An Inconvenient Sequel, this was mandatory. When I’ve seen a film months before its release in a festival setting, I often try to see it a second time.
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH FULL MOVIE FREE TV
Two days after the movie’s Sundance premiere, then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer took to the briefing room podium to declare without any evidence that Trump’s inauguration drew the largest audience of any in history, “period.” The next day, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway showed up on TV and unforgettably introduced us to “alternative facts.” A few days later, I realized that differing approaches to the challenge of operating in the realm of truth and reality was the de facto theme of films at Sundance - and that the debate over the most effective ways of speaking truth to power wouldn’t go away anytime soon. The movie was anachronistically optimistic, as if it had been made expecting a different election result and then hastily edited to accommodate reality. “Gore believes that getting the right information to people will encourage them to speak truth to power,” I wrote, “and while that seems almost naive in an era of deeply partisan ‘facts,’ it’s good to be reminded that someone still believes.” The film, a sequel to Al Gore’s Oscar-winning 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, had been selected to open the Sundance Film Festival.Įven then, it felt like a strange film to be watching, a fact that I mentioned in my 2.5/5 star review. The first press screening of An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power was on January 19, the evening before Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States.