An Inconvenient Truth

[Chris Knipp]

It's really a type of essayistic discourse on film, a personal attempt to work out a reasoned line of discourse on the problem of climate control and on the problem of how to transmit a certain urgency to others regarding the need to solve this global problem.

With all due respect, that's a nice, but rather wishy-washy, way of putting it. Gore is pasionate about the cause, and he's trying to get others to come on board. Essay is a nice word, but it's still a documentary, and a committed one marked by strong advocacy. Why do you think he goes around the world with this lecture? He's not trying to find something, he's trying to convert and galvanize and excite and even scare the hell out of people, and he's succeeding, from what I've heard.

Many documentaries are biased and many are personal. ONe of my favorites of recent years is My Architect. The possessive pronoun indicates the personal focus and it is very much an exploration of self as well as of Louis Kahn's career. I don't see An Incovenient Truth as any different from Michael Moore's films. We may once have thought documentaries were something about Eskimos, or butterflies, or the digestive system. What is Uncovered--an essay? Documentary is a broad category, distinct from fiction. I think An Inconvenient Truth is very well done and is doing very well, except for the fact that some activists are impatient with Gore's failure to question the system more and propose more protest and activism.