An Inconvenient Truth
We finally had the chance to see An Inconvenient Truth this weekend. Not surprisingly, I liked the film and found it to be a rousing call to action, accessible to the relatively uninformed masses (e.g. most of America).
Al Gore’s presentation is based on facts compiled during hundreds of scientific studies. The demonstration of trends over time – atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, temperature readings, and population growth, to name a few – foretells of a future that’s not so rosy.
America obviously needs to improve their approach to environmentalism, from top to bottom. On a large scale, the Kyoto Protocol would have been a good start. Unfortunately, our stubborn and selfish leadership won’t allow it. There is a movement by U.S. Mayors to advance the goals of the Protocol. Pittsburgh, unfortunately, is not on the list; I’ve sent letters to our city leadership and I encourage others to do the same.
(Update: On July 5, I received a phone call from a staffer of my city councilman, informing me that the council passed a resolution encouraging the mayor to join the program. Chances for success look good, he said. I hope so.)
On a smaller scale, but no less important, is a personal recognition of the environmental impact one makes every day. Ignorance of/indifference to the environmental consequences of our actions has been the norm for far too long; modern oil society has flourished because of it. But the writing is on the wall: We need to make changes.
Yes, sometimes environmentalism is hard. It’s hard to reconcile a life in the suburbs with sound green living. I find my own attachment to the local grocery store, with its oil-powered thousand-mile long supply chains, to be troubling (thankfully, there are alternatives).
But there is no simple way around it. Nothing is going to improve if we continue down the path we are on. What an inconvenient truth.
Black ops
After three evenings in front of the TV, I am happy to report that “JFK” has been watched, mulled over, and thoroughly enjoyed. I can’t believe that it took me 14 years to see it.
I’d call it less of a movie and more of a documentary-monologue. But that’s fine, because there’s a lot that needs to be said, and even three-and-a-half hours does not do the subject justice.
Whenever I see the Zapruder film, I am amazed that such a momentous occasion, one that changed the course of the world, was captured on film and will be preserved forever. The power of the image is hard to deny, and I see no reason to believe the cut-and-dried conclusions of the Warren Commission.
What really breaks my heart every time I see the film is that the whole drama of the country for decades to come is played out in 26 grainy, soundless seconds. We see a bright young hope, eager to end war and advance the rights of all brought down by the darker powers, who seek only to maintain the military-industrial status quo.
And it still goes on.
Attention all Netflix customers…
… get the third disc of the Twilight Zone DVD series. All four episodes are among the best TV you’ll ever see.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Arielle and I went to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind tonight. It’s very rare that we go out to see a movie on its opening night; it’s even more rare that we’d make the effort to see Jim Carrey in action (Bruce Almighty, anyone? I thought so.).
But, wow, am I glad we did. I think Charlie Kaufman could walk away from writing screenplays forever and, just from his work on Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and now this, he’d be welcomed into the pantheon with open arms.
I just love how Kaufman’s movies pull the rug of reality out from under the viewer’s feet. It’s a totally disorienting experience that challenges one to become more than just a passive set of eyeballs taking in the film.
This movie, as did the other two, encouraged me to constantly reassess my ideas of what was fact and what was fantasy. Without giving too much of the movie away, what troubled me most was the nagging thought that perhaps all of the memories that Carrey’s character, Joel, was trying to save were merely fantasies that he had cooked up in the first place. This seemed plausible to me, especially after the crumbling beach house scene where it appeared that Joel’s initial meeting with Clementine (Kate Winslet) was all the further that their relationship really ever progressed.
I’m still having trouble making the jump from that apparently accurate memory of Joel walking away to how they actually hooked up and ended up spending so much time together. The tangible evidence or their relationship – the two garbage bags worth of mementos that Joel brings to Dr. Mierzwiak’s office and Joel’s and Clementine’s tapes in which they recount their dislikes of each other – exists, and by the end of the movie I was pretty satisfied that things had occurred as Joel had remembered them, more or less, but part of me would like to believe that there’s something more.
