Final

Documentary? Environmental protection? Global warming and the end of the world? How bald and pedantic this film sounds like! But An Inconvenient Truth has jumped out the normal levels of conventional movies with its unusual single person presentation that offers the most persuasive and enlightened documentary ever. It drives us to explore the issue from the eye of humanity that changes our perspectives and summons for instant actions.

A film about the decision we should make, takes American former Vice President Al Gore's worldwide lecture as a theme and exposed a discomforting locked-up truth that wakes us up from self-deconstruction. For more than three decades, the long-term environmental activist collects enormous researches associated with global warming that ignore by the society. Al Gore zooms into core of how the world warns us with its fatal symptoms, including the exceeding increase of greenhouse gases that cause by human pollutions, the raise of sea levels that will eventually cause immersion of lands, the massive heat waves killed thousands around the world, the intensifying draughts and floods on after another that led to the dry up of Lake Chad and inundations in China and India, the meltdown of North and South Poles' ice and its impact on polar bears, the vanishing of the beautiful coral reefs, and the extinction of many other scarce species, the horrific spreading of epidemic infectious diseases like SARS, the real-estate, pop-up, etc, the all-time high record typhoons in Japan and tornadoes in the U.S, irregular hurricanes like Ivan, Frances, Jeanne and the most recent deadliest Katrina that not only cost myriad damages but also thousands of priceless life, and make countless more become homeless. The list goes on and on, none of these calamities sound strange to the world, and each of them work together in Al Gore's insightful power-point presentation to educate the public about the serious condition of climate crisis.

The globe is like a timing bomb, and according to the majority scientists, humanity will have to face big disasters associated with the sudden changes of the climate system on Earth. The dramatic increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is largely caused by human contamination. Many serious situations we have never experienced before will be all coming after us. Is God punishing us? Or it is our humans who really create these disasters ourselves? And now it's the time to face the "period of consequences". If this sounds like a groundless fear, please spend one drop of your spare time to watch this movie carefully, and then reconsider everything again. However, since idle theorizing can hardly make any efforts, therefore, reconsideration is not the only result pursuing by Al Gore from people around the world. Especially the U.S, he insists, as the biggest emission country on earth should realize the water is boiling before it is too late. But if the U.S. mainstream does not bother to change at all, what can the rest do? Al Gore tells us that the political and economic obstacles should not be an excuse, and as humanity, we should consider the global warming problem as a "moral issue". Are gold bars really weightier than the entire planet? And the future of our children? Do not make the end of the world a nonfiction to our offspring, and the know-how techniques are on our hands. Al Gore shows us a graph of how many emissions be will be cut in half with our determination to act, and the proudly reminiscence of American history had proven that we have the ability to do this.

Although, facts presenting is the orthodox system to make arguments more compelling, but the most crucial portion is the way Al Gore converts the literal warnings into true-to-life conversations. With confident, humorous and relaxing attitudes, he explains the global warming problem concisely to the common people. He calls for immediate actions and convinces that we still have time to make the change and save our only homeland - the Earth, for the moral responsibility of our next generation. He recalls the surprising facts from time to time, uses a whole brunch of comparable pictures, chart and graphs from the past and present, forecast future results scientifically and even included animations for sharp emotional and visual effects. Through Al Gore's lively presentation, these might-be "so-what" data correlated with every living thing in the planet had transmitted into a real world close-up, so stunning that they are enough to move people in every category. Besides the announcement of the vast range of scientific research reports that reveal and corroborate unbelievable emergency warning from the Earth, Al Gore had also melted down the economic and political controversies that cause the ignorance of environmental protection by giving alternative perspectives for these economists and politicians. And as a politician himself, Al Gore shared his personal and resonant stories about his lovely farm-life childhood and the highly-inspired time in college that set him a steadfast determination to change this global crisis by entering the congress. Although the outcomes were not as pleasant as expected, many set-backs and frustrations had beaten him to the bottom, however, the almost lost of his beloved son and remembrance of the death of his older sister reminds Al Gore the importance of life, and roused his willpower to start this mission of worldwide lecture. Throughout the slide-show presentation, the audience won't feel like they are listening to a politician or a scientist arguing the rights and wrongs, instead, they are listening to a person, as a part of the human race, who rings a bell and shows us what we had overlooked for so long.

Unfortunately, An Inconvenient Truth has to tolerate flaws of documentary film's dry and boring label which scares away many people before it can infuses its inspiration. Although Al Gore himself might have been the most attractive selling point for the film, but also because of whom he is, some people will more likely build up conceptual bias toward this inconvenient truth. In fact, many of these realistic people had already treated Al Gore's work as a propaganda campaign show that helped him to gain reputation. If the film is judged and rejected by its jacket, how many influential individuals will have the chance to get the massage? I ask myself after watching the film ironically, why should people still have to pay to know the truth if it is a deadly serious must-know? Nevertheless, how much percentage of factory owners and policy makers in the world whom really need to be stirred and make changes will have the time to hear this seemingly radical and heretic preaching? And within that tiny percentage, how many are willing to give up what they used to believe and live on from the previous state without any debates and arguments? And then how many will have the courage to move into actions for immediate changes? And within those enthralled individuals, how many will last permanently without stronger supports from the governments, corporations, institutions and other aspects of the public? Before actually trying to change the world, Al Gore might have to dig a little bit deeper on these issues and work harder to counteract these difficult barriers constructed sturdily by the society.

But perhaps, being a messenger is the best way to start. An Inconvenient Truth impels us to wonder why blame God for sending down natural catastrophe, but not blame ourselves what we did to the Earth? It throws behind all vex concerns and fears, the factors associated with global warming and the persuasiveness of Al Gore's presentation is unbeatably convincing. It pushes us to reconsider this crisis as a moral issue that humanity should make big change we are responsible for.