An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

Director:

Davis Guggenheim

Release Date:

31 August 2006 (Thailand)

Genre:

Documentary

Tagline:

A Global Warning

Plot:

A documentary on Al Gore's campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide.

Plot Keywords:

Climate | Global Warming | Global Climate Change | Audience | Crisis

Awards:

Won 2 Oscars. Another 21 wins & 5 nominations

Cast

Al Gore	...	Himself
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Billy West	...	(voice)

Also Known As:

Eine unbequeme Wahrheit (Austria) (Germany) [de]
En obekväm sanning (Finland: Swedish title) (Sweden) [sv]
Une vérité qui dérange (Canada: French title) (France) [fr]
An Inconvenient Truth (Greece) (DVD title) [el]
En ubekvem sandhed (Denmark) [da]
Epämiellyttävä totuus (Finland) [fi]
La verdad incómoda (Colombia) [es]
La verdad incómoda - Una advertencia global (Argentina) [es]
Mia avoli alitheia (Greece) (TV title) [el]
Mia enohlitiki alitheia (Greece) [el]
Neprijatna istina (Serbia) [sr]
Uma Verdade Inconveniente (Brazil) (festival title) [pt]
Una scomoda verità (Italy) [it]
Una verdad incómoda (Spain) [es]
Uygunsuz gerçek (Turkey: Turkish title) [tr]

MPAA:

Rated PG for mild thematic elements.

Runtime:

100 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Canada:G | UK:U | Ireland:G | Singapore:PG | Finland:K-3 | Netherlands:MG6 | Norway:A | Hong Kong:I | Australia:PG | Portugal:M/6 | Sweden:Btl | Switzerland:7 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:7 (canton of Vaud) | USA:PG (certificate #42438) | Iceland:L | South Korea:All | France:U | Germany:o.Al. | Malaysia:U | Brazil:Livre

Company:

Lawrence Bender Productions

Trivia:

This is the first carbon-neutral documentary. NativeEnergy, which works with individuals and organizations to help them compensate for their contributions to global warming, calculated the "carbon footprint" from producing the film, including all travel, office, and accommodations related emissions. The company then offset emissions through renewable energy credits or "green tags from new renewable energy projects. Paramount Classics and Participant will split the cost of these tags; the funds will go towards helping build new Native American, Alaskan Native Village, and farmer-owned renewable energy projects, creating sustainable economies for communities in need and diversifying our energy supply. As Participant founder Jeff Skoll explains: "It would be ironic, not to mention wrong, if we added to the global warming that Al Gore warns about in his film. Plus, these renewable energy projects offer options that will decrease our demand for fossil fuels and otherwise would likely not happen without these kinds of investments." Participant, NativeEnergy and Warner Bros. partnered in a similar way on Stephen Gaghan's film, Syriana (2005), where 100% of the carbon dioxide emissions generated by the production were translated into investments into renewable energy. This follows on from the first "carbon neutral" film The Day After Tomorrow (2004), which director Roland Emmerich paid for out of his own pocket.

Goofs:

Factual errors: When Gore shows the slide of the ice core graph at the beginning of the movie (about 20 minutes in), the numbers on the y-axis are wrong - the average is at 0.5, and the negative numbers are flipped. This graph is correct in the book; the slide is wrong and therefore misleading.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Al Gore: You look at that river gently flowing by. You notice the leaves rustling with the wind. You hear the birds; you hear the tree frogs. In the distance you hear a cow. You feel the grass. The mud gives a little bit on the river bank. It's quiet; it's peaceful. And all of a sudden, it's a gear shift inside you. And it's like taking a deep breath and going, "Oh yeah, I forgot about this."

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in An Inconvenient Penguin (2008) (V)

Soundtrack:

I Need to Wake Up

Frightening realizations and insightful discussion -- Best movie I've seen in last year

I just got out of a sneak preview of this film, and I must say that it is the best movie I've seen in the last year. Go see it!

Whether you're a fan of Al Gore or not, he isn't really the issue here. He does a great job presenting the various forms of overwhelming evidence for global warming and mankind's link to it, but he doesn't do it in a political or spiteful way. He shows global temperature and atmospheric carbon patterns, and he shows that our last 20 years have been the highest by a longshot over the previous 600,000 years. Frankly, before seeing the film, I'd heard a lot of information about global warming being a myth, but this film dispels that notion with many independent pieces of evidence.

Even more importantly, it goes to show why we should care that global warming is occurring. As you may have seen in the trailer, if global warming continues at its current rate, the earth's coastlines will be flooded displacing tens of millions of people, it will increase the strength and frequency of hurricanes and tornadoes, it will irrevocably kill off many of the worlds glaciers, it will dry up lands interior to the coastline (like our heartland), and it will disrupt/kill species after species from polar bears to birds. These changes could occur in as short a time as ten to fifty years from NOW.

Lastly, he finishes with ways in which we can affect a change. It would be easy to see this film, get depressed about all the state of affairs, and throw up one's hands in despair, but the film offers us ways, big and small, to help reverse global warming's effects right now.

I urge you to see this film, you will not regret it.