What a Way to Go-Comparison with The 11th Hour

"What a Way to Go - Life at the End of Empire"

Here is the full comparison of "What a Way to Go" and Leonardo DiCaprio's "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 cinematic conventions weaving a single, largely consistent story which is as accessible as other mainstream 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.

DiCaprio's landscape visuals are spectacular: some are heart-achingly beautiful while others – depicting environmental destruction – are just as eye-catching in their own way. But I am not sure that depicting pristine wildernesses helps convey the movie’s message. We need to understand and value ecosystems and biofeedback rather than anthropocentrically as iconic species or beautiful landscapes in isolation.

What is the message of The 11th Hour? It’s mixed (as is the message of What a Way to Go). DiCaprio, Ray Anderson and others focus on “industrial civilization” and the resource extraction and pollution that is the inevitable concomitant of industrialism. But The 11th Hour also has its “happy chapter” highlighting energy efficiencies and other means of holding on to our present ways of life. It enjoins us to rejoice in frugality.

For What a Way to Go, the message is also mixed, with Tim Bennett allowing William Catton, Derrick Jensen and others to speak, but coming to his own conclusions rather than scripting these guests to contribute to his story. Bennett demonstrates the truth that we are all responsible for selecting in our own ways how we interpret the mass of evidence before us and how we change accordingly.

The carefully-groomed guests in The 11th Hour contrast with the rough and ready guests in What a Way to Go, who speak unscripted from the depths of their experience, passions and wisdom. The respective appearances of Professor Stuart Pimm illustrate this painfully well. In The 11th Hour, Pimm wears a suit, collar and tie and his hair is perfect (The 11th Hour deployed hairspray liberally – it didn’t enter the mind of Tim Bennett); he gives a polished rehearsed performance, unmoving against a blank background. In What a Way to Go he wears a jumper, his hair is a mess, he is speaking off the cuff, his body swaying with passion and the background is an incongruous mantelpiece.

Richard Heinberg gives a succinct explanation of peak oil in What a Way to Go, but reports that “the producer and director [of The 11th Hour] decided against including a mention of Peak Oil”. William Catton and Richard Manning speak directly about human overpopulation in What a Way to Go, but the problem is skirted in The 11th Hour.

The guests in The 11th Hour are all establishment names; the guests in What a Way to Go include a two of the same characters (Mander and Pimm - who are on the edge of the establishment) but most of the time is given to thinkers who are a bit too hot for the establishment to embrace with comfort. You won’t find What a Way to Go's main guests in National Geographic or receiving awards from the AAAS.

Overall, these are very different movies. An average child could safely see The 11th Hour as it is a sanitized account of reality, whereas What a Way to Go is more confronting. There is a place for both movies: just as An Inconvenient Truth dumbs down the science, over-simplifies the issues and underplays the magnitude of the problems - yet also awakend millions of people to a crisis they had not previously perceived, The 11th Hour breaks it gently for those who have not previously thought deeply about Earth's environment - the viewer takes away images and impressions. What a Way to Go is the advanced course for those who are intellectually and emotionally prepared to examine critically our way of life - the viewer takes away ideas, even subversive ones.

Keith Thomas, 11 October 2007

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Last updated 12 October 2007. For more information about the Nature and Society Forum, e-mail our office