Burning Down the House

Two hot films dominate this hot summer’s fare

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
07/21/06
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/S&E/documentaries.com
 

There’s two documentaries out there right now about global warming. One of them is attracting immense attention, galvanizing people, creating an American hero, and scaring the piss out of the far right.

The other one is more low key. It gives a detailed analysis of what is causing global warming, what the effects of global warming are likely to be, how bad it might get, and what can be done about it.

In the long run, it might be the more important of the two documentaries.

Tom Brokaw, retired news anchor, decided to do something that he had limited opportunity to do in the last 15 years or so that he worked for NBC: he got to make an honest, non-flashy, and informative documentary. Think about it: when was the last time you saw something like that on network TV? Been a while, hasn’t it?

Naturally, Brokaw’s documentary isn’t on network television. It’s on the Discovery Channel, a station that itself has become far too fond of monster trucks and idiotic “Did Jesus live?” pseudo-documentaries with lots of blurred and jittery camera shots to denote that something interesting is going on when in fact it is not.

“Global Warming: What You Need to Know” is a good, old-fashioned documentary, one which avoids “recreations” and voice of doom pronouncements.

I sat down to watch it last week with low expectations. The present state of network news isn’t going to convince anyone that the people delivering the news are in any way journalists (Katie Couric, the new anchor for CBS, in the footsteps of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, twittered that she wasn’t going to the middle east to cover the Israeli assault on its neighbors because it would be much too dangerous. Might muss her hair or something). NBC has been among the worst, so about all I really expected from Brokaw was some sort of shuffling shuck-and-jive about how nobody really knows what’s causing global warming, but obviously nuclear power is the answer, along with drilling in ANWR.

What I got, instead, was about an hour and twenty minutes (after commercials) of solid science backed by rigorous facts, combined with a straightforward analysis of what we might expect, and what we can do to avoid the worst of it. He didn’t try to pretend that human emissions of CO2 had nothing to do with it, he didn’t try to balance it with interviews with crackpots and oil industry hacks who would babble mindlessly about non-existent increased solar radiation or try to assure everyone that climate fluctuations are normal (they are; the trouble is, they tend to kill off the species at the top of the food chain when they occur rapidly). I might have wished that he had given this administration half the kicking around that it deserves for its criminally negligent attitude toward global warming, but on the other hand, I suspect Brokaw was trying to reach an audience that is already feeling defensive about this administration and doesn’t need to be chased off with an aggressively anti-administration approach.

It was solid television journalism in a country where the art form is almost entirely lost. Most documentaries worth watching are either imports from the BBC, or made into movies.

It’s been on a couple of times already, and will be showing again at the following hours, all on Discovery: Saturday, July 22 at 8:00 PM; Sunday July 23 at 12:00 AM; Saturday, July 29 at 2:00 PM; Sunday, July 30 at 10:00 AM; and August 21 at 12:00 PM. Consult your local listing.

The other documentary, of course, is “An Inconvenient Truth” with Al Gore.

I saw it with considerably higher expectations, since I’ve seen so many good reviews of it, from people whose opinions on such I respect.

It is a remarkable piece of filmmaking. Some folks complained that it was as much about Al Gore as it was about global warming, and that’s true. He talks about an array of personal matters, from his sister dying of lung cancer to his son’s injury to his feelings about the coup of 2000 which stole the presidency from him.

It would be easy at this point to say, “Oh, he’s just another politician who has found a hot cause and is running on it for all he’s worth, which is why there is stuff about what a caring and compassionate guy he is in it.”

Except that it rings true. I’m not very inclined to trust politicians, but with Gore, one comes away with the strong sense that this isn’t a handy cause to promote a political career, but something that the man believes, deeply and with great conviction.

Certainly his track record backs it. He was talking about global warming in Congress long before most people had ever heard of it, and went to Kyoto, despite it being a politically unpopular move.

And that a politician is baring himself the way Gore is, and working so hard and so consistently to address the issue of global warming, gives the documentary a lot more gravitas than it might otherwise have. He is a man literally bearing his breast in order to show that he will give all for what he believes. That’s pretty hard to ignore.

The science is dumbed down in “An Inconvenient Truth”, but he still makes a compelling case. The documentary has humor, including a early cartoon by Matt Groening (of “Simpsons” fame) showing sunbeams being waylaid by greenhouse gases. And Gore’s own laconic, folksy way of speaking fails to conceal a razor sharp wit. (When I was a kid, my strongest impression of what an American accent was came from “Huckleberry Hound” cartoons: Gore does little to alter that perception).

At one point, I tried to imagine Putsch doing something like this. Not global warming, obviously, but some social issue he claims to believe in. Saving stem cells, for instance. Could he have the courage and conviction to make a compelling documentary?

In the long run, though, the Brokaw piece may be the more important. Gore’s film will be much more widely seen in America, and, being tailored to American tastes, it will convince more Americans about the perils of global warming than just about anything else.

But for the rest of the world, the Brokaw piece will show that in America, the science behind global warming is known, the danger of global warming is known, and the remedies for global warming are known – and feasible.

And that will increase world pressure on America to stop hiding behind excuses and paranoia, and accept responsibility for its role in global warming.

Brokaw and Gore both suggest that America may be finally ready to begin doing that.

And that is very good news indeed.