An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

A picture of the planet earth from outer space.   Taken from http://www.treehugger.com.

I don't know how I managed to miss seeing An Inconvenient Truth in an actual movie theatre some time in the spring of 2006.  But on  the other hand, I would have never anticipated that it would be such a pleasurable and engaging visual experience compared with other big box office documentaries such as Sicko and March of the Penguins, which is not to devalue either of these films.  I liked both Sicko and March of the Penguins but when I saw them on DVD, I didn't find myself wondering what it might have been like to see them in a movie theatre.  

For the most part, almost every movie I see via netflix on DVD (because I've got a pretty good set up in my Mom's basement--a vintage maxi-screen Sony), I find myself thinking, 'boy I sure am glad I didn't waste my time getting to a movie theatre to see that: more than likely nothing much was lost in that translation.'  

But with An Inconvenient Truth, not only do I find its visual attributes intriguing (from the melting glaciers to the full color planet earth from outer space to the creative and glitzy graphics) but the various back stories  just keep getting more and more interesting.  From Gore's loss of the election in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, the violence in Darfur, Niger and recently in Mumbai, Obama's election, the collapse of the stock market and the global economy, everything seems connected to one or more aspects of the predictive elements of this film. 

Ever since first learning what global warming was, I have wondered how long Americans would be allowed to shuffle along in denial concerning the short-sightedness of their gas and fossil fuel guzzling habits.  When I first saw An Inconvenient Truth, the blown up version of Al Gore's PowerPoint presentation on the dangers of global warming, on HBO in Demand, I knew right away that I would have to return to it for further study more times than HBO in Demand was willing to accommodate.  HBO in Demand, and indeed much of HBO, is generally a blessing amidst the pervasive heathenism of mainstream television but even HBO has strict limits on the extent of attention it is willing to give to serious and philanthropic programs.  They will do absolutely wonderful programs in which there isn't even a glimmer of economic motivation, such as the endless series they did about a year ago on substance abuse and drug addiction.  I watched every single one and grew ever more fascinated by the range of approaches and doctor interviews but thinking to myself, for how long can HBO afford to do this?  Am I like the only person watching this right now?  

Americans just hate downbeat stuff, unless of course it has something to do with someone who is a star, and then they can't seem to get enough.  As for myself, I stopped being an American in this sense a long time ago.  Downbeat is one of my stipulated viewing preferences.  Which brings me back to the difficulty with An Inconvenient Truth.  Mixed in with this brilliant and essential presentation of an urgent problem with political and economic life on this planet, the way they got around the innately unmarketable character of the material was by weaving it into the narrative of Gore's own upper class, Phi Beta Kappa type, flawlessly patrician affect.  

This can get annoying.  On the other hand, where else can you learn in 2008 that there were terrible floods in Mumbai, India, 37 inches of rain in 24 hours in July of 2005?

Global warming causes both flooding and drought.  And both conditions lend themselves to mass violence.   I think these things are really interesting.

I should make it emphatically clear that I really really like just about everything I know about Al Gore, including the fact that he is related to Gore Vidal, on of my favorite writers ever.  I would imagine they don't have much appreciation for each other although I wonder how Vidal feels about Al now.  There is all this amazing filmic footage and in the commentary provided by the director (one of the few occasions when this isn't more annoying than not), he goes through in detail the illustrations of the environment in particular places where changes ripple out to the far ends of the earth.  

Photo of the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific, 

one of the destination of Charles Darwin and the Beagle on Planet Earth

Despite the overall format of a lecture on a scientific topic, the film really moves in terms of a series of transitions from topic to topic: the melting of the glaciers, the range of species of animals and sea life experiencing extinction, drought, hurricanes, flooding, the rising of sea level in major cities around the world.  

After WWII, the population of the earth reached two billion for the first time.  Since then the earth's population has grown to nine billion putting pressure on water demand and food demand.  This is a really important film.  This is a really moving film although it doesn't tell you what to do.  All things considered, it is pretty damn scary.  There are other films as well which connect to this film and are helpful to thinking about how we can collectively respond to the issues threatening to destroy the planet.  How could you not care about the planet? 

Speaking of which, the continuation to this film is to watch the series The Planet Earth.  It is perhaps an 18 hour series, the very best of its kind.  My sister gave me the series last Christmas because she and I have always shared a love of nature and a fascination with conservation and animal life.  I had hoped she and I would get to watch it together but in my world, nobody has the time (or takes the time) to watch such things besides me.  

Planet Earth is a great big series about all the places on the earth where there are still significant populations of animals living in a state of nature.  It always astonishes me to think how few animals can actually be domesticated.  Most cannot.  Most are completely wild and, in fact, depend upon having very little contact with human society for their own survival.  Or in other words, their lives and ours are mutually exclusive.  But not really because it turns out that if they don't get what they need, we probably won't be getting what we need.  So our lives are in some ways complimentary.

The overall theme of Planet Earth turns out to be coming to terms with the fact that a record number of species of animal life are in danger of extinction or some other cataclysmic change in their status quo in ways that are ultimately contingent upon the problems humans are facing in terms of drought, starvation and the lack of nourishing food and drinkable water.  But the other story is this--the stunning beauty of the natural world, of the desert, the lakes, the rivers, the sea, the mountains and plains, even as more and more of it is in peril.  I think as human beings we are right to regard any dramatic changes in the status quo of the planet with fear and trepidation.  But the planet has been through dramatic changes and it is probably going to go through more.  Our present civilization on earth may not be the main point of everything but just another point on the continuum of forever.  

At the very least, I am prepared to think that there are more answers out there than most of us are presently aware of. 

Jazz on a Summer's Day (1958)

Mahalia Jackson and Duke Ellington around the time they made their album together.  

Jazz on a Summer's Day is an unusual and unique concert film taken from the Newport Jazz Festival of 1958, the only film of its kind ever released with just some of the greatest performance footage from such artists as Chico Hamilton, Eric Dolphy, Dinah Washington, Mahalia Jackson, Big Maybelle, Chuck Berry, Thelonius Monk, Louis Armstrong. It begins magically with this little piece by Jimmy Guiffre.  George Avakian determined which songs were shot based upon his knowledge of which songs would be cleared for release. 

Tonight I felt the urge to see once again the fascinating sequence of a very handsome and focused Chico Hamilton playing something really special on the drums, almost operatic in intensity with Eric Dolphy on flute the only time I've ever seen him play that I can recall.  Directed by the photographer Bert Stern, who had never done anything of this type before, and shot entirely in a lush color, Hamilton plays against a red background.  

He had some notion of casting Chico Hamilton as a leading man although it seems as though the plot ultimately fell away and it is a concert film.  Nonetheless, Chico Hamilton's time on screen is absolutely magical. 

Otherwise, there is also wonderful footage of the audiences, the town, the seagulls and the sail boats entirely in period costume.  The late 50s seems a strange, photogenic place. 

This is the photographer who took those extraordinary shots of Marilyn Monroe in the nearly nude shortly before her death.  Still he isn't necessarily the kind of photographer I love, very conventional, very mainstream.  Duke Ellington and Miles Davis were there that year but not in the film because he had been told he wouldn't be able to get clearance to screen them.  He actually says he didn't like Miles Davis anyway because he was too far out so this is no musical connoisseur.   Everybody and his brother seems to have played that year and not made the film for some reason or another. 

But I love this film, nonetheless, for what it does have.  It is filled with so many rare musical and visual moments, perhaps because George Wein, who was the Daddy of the Newport Jazz Festival, was rarely in the habit of allowing filmmakers to film and screen films of the Newport Jazz Festival.  Apparently, this deal with Stern did not leave a good taste in Wein's mouth and so there were no more such projects although I would imagine there is quite a pile of footage sitting in some vault somewhere waiting for the dust to settle sufficiently so that it can be re-edited into the version that will be known of the festival by posterity, now that the Newport Jazz Festival no longer exists and that time that no longer is seems so magical with Chuck Berry singing "Sweet Little 16" backed up by Philly Joe Jones on drum and Jack Teagarden on trombone.  

Of course, always the best thing is Mahalia Jackson's set, which ends the film with her rendition of "The Lord's Prayer" the way we use to sing it at Abyssinian Baptist Church when I was a child.