An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power – the follow-up to the 2006 Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth – plays like an ecological thriller where the President of the United States is the villain.
Except this isn’t a Hollywood thriller. This is real life.
“Climate change isn’t a matter of who was right and who was wrong, it’s about the urgency to save the planet by any means necessary.”
Former Vice President Al Gore is front and center, yet again, to raise awareness on climate change – a passion of his long before the first documentary even came out. You might wonder if his film warranted a sequel – how many documentaries can say they have a sequel? – but An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power – goes to show you the effects of a long-gestating global issue.
One of the main hooks of the film harkens back to a point most balked at from the first movie. Gore indicates his prediction of flooding at the World Trade Center site cause a lot of skeptics to groan. Once Hurricane Sandy hit, Gore was proven correct.
The strength of the otherwise flawed and sometimes distracted documentary is Gore never stands before his audience and pats himself on the back. There’s no self-congratulatory finger pointing or told-ya-sos. Climate change isn’t a matter of who was right and who was wrong, it’s about the urgency to save the planet by any means necessary.
“…worthy of a much needed watch.”
Directors Bonni Cohen and John Shenk take us globetrotting with Gore, who visits places all over the world to study climate variances. The movie is straightforwardly shot, incorporating graphs and stock footage, along with talking heads and Gore’s occasionally fiery speeches. The movie gets a bit distracted at times when Gore takes us down memory lane, particularly lamenting his 2000 election loss. Moments like these feel superfluous and take away from the message at hand.
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power spends its time leading up to the Paris Agreement and, sadly, we know how that ends. Watching the film, knowing its recent outcome, adds a layer of melancholy and defeat, but Gore refuses to be silenced.
The documentary is timely and frightening and, despite some technical missteps along the way by the filmmakers, worthy of a much needed watch.
An Inconvenient Sequel (2017) Directed by: Bonni Cohen and John Shenk. Starring: Al Gore
Grade: B
