Last Straw

The 11^th Hour is a doc­u­ment­ary film, co-written and nar­rated by Leonardo DiCaprio, but don’t let that put you off. This is one of the best envir­on­mental doc­u­ment­ar­ies I’ve seen and DiCaprio does a fine job.

Inter­mingled with a rous­ing mont­age of earthly images and audio, the back­bone of the film is a series of inter­views with over fifty politi­cians, sci­ent­ists, and envir­on­mental act­iv­ists — includ­ing Stephen Hawk­ing and David Suzuki—who clev­erly explain the com­plex bind we’re in, how we got here and how we might get out of it.

It’s a treas­ure trove of quot­able dia­logue, and after detail­ing the down right depress­ing situ­ation we’re in and the obstacles we need to over­come, the most inspir­ing stuff comes in the last seg­ment where we are presen­ted not only with prac­tical ideas and solu­tions for the future but with a whole new way of look­ing at our situ­ation; this gem from Paul Hawken:

The great thing about the dilemma we’re in is that we get to reima­gine every single thing we do. In other words there isn’t one single thing that we make or sys­tem that we have that doesn’t require a com­plete remake, and so there are two ways of look­ing at that. One is, like, oh my gosh, you know, what a big bur­den. The other way to look at it, which is the way I prefer, is what a great time to be born, what a great time to be alive, because this gen­er­a­tion gets to essen­tially com­pletely change this world.

If I was a film­maker this is the film I’d like to make.