Leo DiCaprio Takes Up Where Al Gore Left Off

in New '11th Hour' Environmental Documentary

Three-time Academy Award-nominated movie star Leonardo DiCaprio and his film-making partners, Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen, have done us a great favor.

They have assembled an incredible array of passion and brainpower in their stirring documentary, The 11th Hour, to teach us just about every thing we need to know about the fate of planet Earth -- how bad things are, and what we can do to reverse the effects of humanity's rapid devastation of this planet.

The filmmakers have culled 90 minutes of brilliance from approximately 150 hours of interviews of the best of the best -- the rock stars of ecology, public policy, social critique and visionary philosophy. They have done a magnificent job.

The 11th Hour is a first-class overview of the technology, the politics, the consequences of corporate and consumer behavior, and the aspirations and means to fix the mess we humans have created.

As DiCaprio says, "We wanted to present the experts and have them carry the narrative of the film ..." which they do extraordinarily well.

The film is great-looking as well, as the interviews are interspersed with scenes of contrasting beauty and environmental victimization.

Dizzying montages, barren forests, beautiful seas, mudslides and clubbed baby seals, all set against a vast array of consumer images.

Are we at the 11th hour?

The "11th hour," of course, refers to the last moment when change is possible before it's too late to do anything. And the obvious message of DiCaprio's film is that we residents of planet Earth have reached a tipping point in terms of how we live and the impact we impose on our ecosystems.

And for this reason, The 11th Hour is at times not easy to watch or come to terms with.

It is a challenging, sometimes overwhelming experience that explores both millions of years of the Earth's existence in all its complexity, and the immediate present and the enormous impact human behavior is having not just on the planet's climate systems, but on our oceans, our air quality, our forests and the communities we live in.

Green Day Rock Star Billie Joe Armstrong captures the importance of the film nicely:

The 11th Hour is intense.

It tells us the truth that nobody wants to hear: that human beings, especially greedy corporate executives and their politician cronies, are responsible for putting our planet in serious danger.

If things don't change soon, life on Earth may not survive.

It has to be this generation that breaks the chain between the polluting corporations and the crooked politicians, this generation that changes its habits so there's something left for other species and the people who come after us.

There is hope. We can make changes in our everyday lives, and most of the technology we need to move forward, we already have today. What we really need is the leadership, and the will, to change.

What shines through 11th Hour overwhelmingly is the warmth, charisma, caring and unbelievable wisdom of the diverse collection of talking heads in the film, and that goes for DiCaprio as well.

Leo plays a key role of intermediary in the film, stepping in to summarize and clarify, and he even occasionally holds corporate America's feet to the fire.

He does a convincing job, even though he appears far less harrowed than he was in his brilliant role as an undercover cop barely surviving in Boston's criminal underground in Martin Scorsese's recent Academy Award-winning film The Departed.

Our wasteful consumption

But it seems clear from the film that if we just started "buying green," behavior that DiCaprio hopes that 11th Hour will promote, we are not going to make the difference necessary to save the planet for the coming generations.

We've got to tackle the issue of consumption head on.

Betsy Taylor, founder of the organization Center for the New American Dream, says in her appearance in 11th Hour basically that the American way of life is about working really hard for long hours, making money and going out and buying things, and then starting over and repeating -- a system totally at odds with the sustainability of our planet.

DiCaprio's co-directors were a bit more willing to talk about the issue of consumption at the Los Angeles press conference.

Nadia Conners said, "The film is not a blame thing, but we really have to be concerned about the disposable nature of our daily lives."

And Leila Conners Petersen, Nadia's co-director and sister, also spoke directly to the issue of wasteful consumption.

Illustrating this point, the filmmakers proudly displayed their generic water bottles, which contained safe and very drinkable tap water.

Slashing the consumption of water bottles is a good place to start: 25 million water bottles tossed away each day.

According to the Earth Policy Institute, and as the "Think Outside the Bottle" campaign of Corporate Accountability International emphasizes:

"American demand for bottled water consumes more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually just to make the bottles, enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year.

Add to this the green house gases emissions from the long-distance transportation of bottled water and you have a clear illustration of what rather simple behavior changes on our part can do to reduce unnecessary waste."

One of the tensions in 11th Hour is about how to effect real change.

Individual action such as refusing to buy bottled water is important, but the film makes clear that our problems are so daunting and systemic that only when governments and corporations make drastic alterations in policy can we have any confidence that the Earth's rapid decline will be stopped and hopefully reversed for future generations.

And what is underscored in 11th Hour is that there has been total failure at that level: The Bush administration has been a colossal disaster for the environment, and oil companies like Exxon Mobile have worked assiduously to distort the public debate on climate change.

The reality is that Leonardo DiCaprio, with his talent, celebrity and ability to influence popular culture, could probably exercise more influence than all the experts in 11th Hour.

As U2's Bono has shown, if you are serious, persistent and audacious, you can get the ear of governments and multinational institutions.

DiCaprio is smart and well-informed enough to hold his own if he chose to take his environmental cause to a higher level -- and he would likely bring a lot of Hollywood along with him.

And he is certainly aware of the impact Hollywood stars have had on social causes in the past; he recently told the press:

"If you look back to the peace and the civil rights movements, there have been people in the industry that have been at the forefront of that."

One thing DiCaprio could try is pushing for a presidential debate dedicated to environmental issues, following up on the recent Democratic debates focusing on labor and gay and lesbian issues.

Though it's a big first step for him, DiCaprio must know that just making and releasing 11th Hour isn't enough to make a big dent in the priorities of American citizens.

Remember how many speeches and presentations Al Gore gave over years that led to the making of An Inconvenient Truth and all the public events Gore was involved with after its release to make it a big success?

The 11th Hour is a more complicated and ambitious effort; certainly a worthy successor to Gore's film, but a fraction of An Inconvenient Truth's audience size will watch 11th Hour unless there is a barnstorming effort on behalf of the film and its message.

Will DiCaprio step up to the plate and follow in Gore and Bono's footsteps and use his megaphone to tell "the powers that be" to make substantive change and rally millions of young people to make the demands that will protect their future? He certainly has the means to do it.

Reviewers are already connecting 11th Hour with Gore's highly successful An Inconvenient Truth.

After all, it was DiCaprio who presented Gore with his Academy Award for the documentary and joked about him running for president a few months ago.

Collecting $49 million at the box office, An Inconvenient Truth is the third-highest-grossing documentary film to date in the United States after Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and March of the Penguins.

Moore's SICKO now ranks fourth with $23 million as of Aug. 12. These kind of numbers at this point are very lofty goals for 11th Hour, since it does not have the hype of the Weinstein publicity machine as the Moore documentaries have had.

Nor the relentless promotion that Gore gave for An Inconvenient Truth and the eponymous book, which hit No. 1 on the New York Times paperback bestseller list .

However, if it gets the publicity it deserves, The 11th Hour could easily serve as the classic primer to help students of all ages learn everything they need to know to save the planet.

The filmmakers expressed hope that all 150 hours of the interviews would be posted on the web. Let's hope that happens -- it would be a huge service to schools, universities and the rest of us

tags: ecology  environment  capitalism  consumption  movie  dicaprio  

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