An Inconvenient Truth, 2006 ★★★★★

Ash and I finally managed to catch the screening of 'An Inconvenient Truth' at Landmark Theatres, a small arty theater in Houston. As expected, this movie wasn't playing in any of the regular theaters at least for as long as a time as say, a chick flick would. Nestled in the upscale old-money district of River Oaks, the theater attracted mostly a liberal crowd. The upper lobby of the theater had a bar where they served drinks in glass goblets that you could take with you to the movie. The crowd was largely geriatric with a sprinkling of artist-like people. Ash and I were the only 'immigrant' people in the audience. The theater in itself was small; 119 capacity with the look of an old Indian theater from inside. Heck, it even took a while to get the projector working after a couple of hiccups. By the look and talk for the crowd, the movie was already preaching to the converted.

The movie, as you know, is based on a presentation that former Vice-President Al Gore gives around the world on Global Warming. This topic is quite dear to my heart and I have strong feelings for people who refuse to believe in this real threat facing mankind. As Al Gore begins by saying that he used to be America's next President, you cannot help but chuckle and feel sorry for the dude at the same time. This might be the only political innuendo (apart from a joke about a student and his geography teacher) in the entire movie. Of course, the movie ends with a calling for strong political will because as Al Gore correctly cites that major changes in today's world can only be enforced or directed by responsible governments. For e.g. The current debate on research on embryonic stem cells rests between being a reality and being discarded to the dusty pages of history solely on one man's moral convictions.

Getting back to AIT, the movie is split on showcasing Al Gore's life and the origins of his strong feelings for the environmental movement in between hard and solid facts on the threat of global warming. The movie's detractors have criticized the movie for being too alarmist but I bet they haven't seen it in the first place. The movie's arguments originate from hard scientific fact collected over several years and are presented with images of changing landscape that will leave you clamoring for action. Unfortunately, as Upton Sinclair famously said (and cited by Gore), "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Al Gore comes across as a affable man whom you cannot help but feel sorry for; a serious distinction from his staid personality during the Presidential campaign of 2000. The brief snippets on his life, and his childhood, the cancer to which he lost his sister too and how his family as tobacco farmers had a hand in it make for powerful viewing. If only he had shown us this side of his personality or character, we would have a different 'leader of the world' today instead of a bumbling scientifically-incompetent idiot we have at present.

But as Gore mentioned in a separate interview (with Conan O'Brien) that as a presidential candidate you are responsible for a variety of issues and cannot really devote your time and attention to one particular issue no matter how passionate you might feel about it. Finally, he proposes political will and individual efforts in helping to solve this looming crisis. In fact, we have all the scientific information and knowledge we need to solve the problem. It is just a matter of will.

The zero-sum argument of economics and environment was also addressed and you would be surprised to know that it is not a choice we have to make. Being environmentally conscious in your business may in fact be economically sound as well. If you don't believe, look at the balance sheet for Toyota and GM. On related news, soaring temperatures caused power outages at data centers in California, hitting MySpace and Yahoo services badly. If global warming is affecting the bottomline of Silicon Valley in the US, there can be no greater threat to the US economy.

However the world can be an irrational and crazy place even in face of irrefutable evidence. As we walked out of the theater, a guy was handing out pamphlets to exiting theater patrons. We read it briefly and it contained all the false propaganda of 'alarmism'. I laughed out loud and walked back to the man. Handing the pamphlet back to him, I said, "Sorry I don't read bullshit." I am sure his salary depended on him not understanding this real crisis of global warming.

If you haven't seen the movie yet, go out now and see it. It might be the only sensible summer movie you will watch this year.