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Review
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Comparison with "The 11th Hour"
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Review: Today I watched the newly-released 2-hour movie “What a Way to Go”. From a long list of emerging crises, it focuses on human population overshoot, climate change, peak oil and mass extinction.
In dealing with these biophysical problems, it addresses the trajectory of human culture since the rise of agriculture in the context of our human nature, the two factors that have brought us to our present situation. And in doing this it asks the questions that repel most Americans, questioning and breaking the breaking the culture of silence. As such it confronts these systemic problems in a way that parallels the approach of Nature and Society Forum.
Derrick Jensen, Daniel Quinn (quotations from both of whom have appeared in our journal), William Catton (whose book was reviewed in our journal), Richard Heinberg (whose books and movie appearances you will have seen), Thomas Berry (at 93), Chellis Glendinning, Richard Manning (Against the Grain) and Jerry Mander feature throughout and a host of others add their own perspectives to the first comprehensive look at the problems occurring now. All these are white Americans, but that’s not inappropriate. Derrick Jensen sums up the first half of the movie: “Forests precede us and deserts dog our heels”.
Woven in between these scholars and thinkers are the views of ordinary people who are beginning to grasp the human place in nature and the scope and scale of the problems. Doing this puts us in the movie.
The movie deliberately eschews a “happy chapter” ending, and tells us what we must do to make the future liveable and to mitigate the most serious possibilities. These measures are simple, and we don’t really need this movie to remind us of them. What we do need - constantly - is the personal reminder from Dmitry Orlov who asks “Are we going to continue destroying the planet, just to be somewhat more comfortable for a little while?” That is, the solutions are not waiting on scientists to refine technologies they are political in the broad sense of the term. Others tell us, starkly, that the situation is unique in human history and that there is no one out there looking after us, thus faith in ‘technofixes’ is delusional thinking.
The documentary's weaknesses are its heavy use ironic of 1950s popular culture images and the loss of rigour you would expect when popularizers are interviewed for soundbites. The corny 1950s images can divert us from the more subtle and pervasive messages embedded in our culture today. The significance of the popularizers' contributions can be overlooked if we take the advice at the beginning of the movie: to “let it wash over you”. These contributions deserve a second or third viewing and should lead viewers to read the authors' books where their arguments are fleshed out with rigour and coherence. Jerry Mander warns us in the movie about the limitations of audio-visual media, but his warning is fleeting: only those who have read his first book can understand what he is really getting at. But let’s not quibble. The movie's scope is impressive - greater than “An Inconvenient Truth” or “Crude Awakening” and it's totally celebrity-free. Despite its uncompromising challenges to viewers, I predict it will quickly acquire “cult status” because of its power to change lives and to motivate people to change events and that we’ll be hearing a lot about it over the coming years.
Two detailed reviews of the movie are here:
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/1072/81/
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=112&Itemid=1
Trailers are available here:
http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com/trailers/
The DVD is available here:
http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com/purchase-the-dvd/
Our copy of the DVD cost $US 24.00 and postage cost $US 12.50 coming to a total of $US 36.50. This converted to $AU 43.85 early August 2007.
Review by Keith Thomas, 23 August 2007
Comments
On 29 August 2007 NSF sponsored the first public screening of the movie in Australia. The response from those attending was wholly favourable, with some who have been active in the topics covered feeling an immediate close bond to the movie. Here is a selection of the comments received:
Thank you and NSF very much for hosting the showing of this important analysis of the issues and challenges confronting us. It is critical that people - particularly decision makers - see it to help face the realities confronting us now, not in some distant future. While the issues and urgency raised were not new, what was valuable was the analysis of why and how people in the US in particular avoided or were able to deny the consequences confronting them. (More ...)
The film's main purpose I think is to wake people up to the fact that if we do not get off the "progress train" soon, we could soon experience the consequences of a major derailment. In a more positive sense, it encourages us to once more re-engage with nature, rather than destroy it. Its use of a kaleidoscope of images does this very well, backed up by the interviews. (More ...)
It was wonderful having a documentary that covered everything, not least population for a change. I felt, however, that it would have been more effective were it half as long and it certainly would be more marketable were it an hour long and not two. (More ...)
Some people criticized the movie for its length (123 minutes) and other technical or production matters. Such criticisms surprised me: let's focus on its content and its arguments rather than comparing its technical aspects with movies in general. It would be a pity if ... (More ...)
We made [the movie] long and dense on purpose. The situation itself is long and dense! Difficult to wrap our minds around. So we chose to have the movie mirror that experience. The present predicament requires that we dig deeper, watch the movie more than once, and/or read the many authors ... (More ...)
The content of the film is a satisfactory synthesis of the problems caused by humans, but it fails to go the next step. ... (More ...)
Comparison with "The 11th Hour"
These two movies have broadly similar themes and were released within a few weeks of each other. It would be tempting, but misleading, to see them as similar or as alternatives. Both movies feature thinkers and writers who contribute their perspective on global problems and their causes and solutions. Both movies intersperse these contributions with evocative visual images and narration which weaves a story for us. Where they differ is that Leonardo DiCaprio's The 11th Hour is a highly professional Hollywood production with the images, narration, text and conventions weaving a single, largely consistent story which is as accessible as other Hollywood output, whereas What a Way to Go permits the featured thinkers to say their pieces in their own way, so that they and the accompanying narration delivers a messier, inconclusive but more realistic account. (More ...)
These are the issues on the long list that scrolls up the screen halfway through the movie:
Honeybee decimation
Global dimming
Peak uranium
Record numbers of new coal plants coming on-line
Destruction of indigenous cultures
Salinization of groundwater
Depleted uranium poisoning
The unscalability of alternative energies
Red tides and algal blooms
Drying forests
Germ factories and bioweapons
Pre-emptive strikes policies
The US national debt
Collapse of the dollar
Collapsing housing bubble
Resource wars
Religious wars and crusades
Theocracy
Nanotechnology
Genetic engineering
New non-lethal weapons technology
Patenting of organisms
Lingering questions about 9/11
Declining per capita food production
Illegal mining and lumbering
Poaching
Illegal dams
Whistleblower intimidation
Carbon sequestration
LNG safety issues
Gender-bending chemicals
Mental health breakdown
Runny moose marrow*
Heavy metal contamination
Methane hydrate mining
Conservation and efficiency
rising insurance losses
Mountaintop removal
Acid rain
Factory farming
Superweeds
Rising birth defects
Toxic buildings
Vulture die-offs
Antibiotic resistance
*Runny moose marrow? This is a manifestation of climate change that has achieved cult attention because of the quirky name given to it. The following reference was posted on the Web in 2004: "Native leaders say that salmon are increasingly susceptible to warm-water parasites and suffer from lesions and strange behavior. Salmon and moose meat have developed odd tastes and the marrow in moose bones is weirdly runny, they say."
Last updated 13 October 2007. For more information about the Nature and Society Forum, e-mail our office