The 11th Hour

The best thing about this film was the fact that it did not focus on the Earth's destruction, but on man's eventual demise as a species. The earth with survive our rape and plunder. It has been here for 4.5 billion years, while we have been here but 150,000. We will eventually join the 99.999% of the species that have lived on this planet and who are now extinct. How quickly we join them is up to us, but we will eventually go the way of the dinosaur.

Through our heavy consumption and trash creation, we are rapidly stripping all of the resources from the Earth and polluting what we don't consume. Soon, we will be faced with the inevitable - it's all gone. If you haven't seen "A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash," then it should be on your list as a "must see." Along with "An Inconvenient Truth," this film tells us what will happen if we stay the course.

The only fault I found in the film was the rapidity with which it presented information. This stuff needs to be digested slowly, and we got it rapid fire. Still, it is an important addition to the story of humankind and how we are planning our own destruction.

This is a wonderful and important documentary. The film is full of terrifying images and fascinating interviews from some great minds. But, luckily, it does not spend too much time making its case about our destruction. After getting the viewer sufficiently terrified, the film shifts its focus to the causes of the problem. The film also inspires viewers to go out and make a difference (and tells them how).

Of course, comparisons will be made to An Inconvenient Truth, so I'll cover that too: it's clear that this project was always intended to be a film; it didn't begin as a PowerPoint presentation. It also doesn't waste time with a biography of it's narrator. But, most importantly, it's got a better mix of fear and inspiration; DiCaprio's film made me want to change the world.

Kudos to Leonardo DiCaprio for putting his time and money into this outstanding documentary.

Let's face it, any informed/intelligent/objective person already knows that we're on a greased path toward species extinction and that we must "change course". "The 11th Hour" is an excellent vehicle for increasing the numbers of folks in that category (...and for reinforcing the knowledge base/commitment of those who think that that they "already know this stuff").

"The 11th Hour" goes way beyond simply pointing at problems. This wonderful documentary provides a fairly sharp focus on practical/viable solutions and serves up some inspiring/motivating ideas/insights.

The use of captivating cinematography and stunning images make for a powerful impact.

I hope that the production company releases a book that details/documents the observations/assertions/conclusions of film's experts. Such a volume (if done well) would serve as an excellent part of any school curriculum.

The 11th hour is a must see if you...

...care about whether or not there is a human race around in the next couple of hundred years.

...care about the quality of life for your children and their children over the next 50 years.

...are a young person who expects to be around for the next 60 to 80 years; then this is all about your future.

As one watches "The 11th Hour" it becomes painfully clear that it doesn't matter how rich or powerful one may be; there can be no escaping the inexorable consequences of the indefensibly insane/unsustainable global industrial/economic model; a model clearly based on little more than short term greed.

As effective/good as "The 11th Hour" is at conveying factual data in a way that holds your attention....it could have gone in a totally different direction.

A dramatic feature film needs to be made that more fully captures/documents the emotional and existential impact of the consequences of current environmental policies: a kind of "Erin Brockovitch" of Global Warming/Climate Change. Clearly, this isn't the last word in this genre.

This is not a crisis that is "out there" in some vague future. Real people's lives are being destroyed now. There are many millions of "canaries in the coal mine" of our biosphere for whom climate change is life and death issue in the near term.

Bottom lines: "The 11th Hour" is a powerful documentary that manages to alarm without fear mongering and to paint a bleakly honest picture without engendering hopelessness.

Go see/support this movie. The last half hour alone (which deals very positively with aspects of the political dimension) is worth the price of admission.

I went into The 11th Hour expecting a straightforward, didactic documentary summarizing the current threats from global warming. If not for a momentary interest on the subject, I would have probably passed it up altogether. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was extremely nuanced, being an insightful and scientific investigation on mankind's role in global warming.

Rather than spurting out random facts and events (like most documentaries), The 11th Hour uses a wide range of viewpoints to build a conceptual foundation that explains the general scientific impression of global warming. Some of the ideas may end up being wrong, but all of them are at least plausible. The different speakers include Paul Hawken, Wangari Maathai, Mikhail Gorbachev, and (my favorite) Stephen Hawking. There are many different ideas communicated, but they are all based on the same underlying principle. The structure of the documentary is very dialog heavy, which can feel overwhelming at times but is guaranteed to bring forth new knowledge to viewers.

The main ideas are nothing new for most people educated on environmental news, but the speakers submit some profound new ways of looking at them. A common theme was relating Earth's existence to the human civilization's existence. If we continue to progress global warming, the planet might be able to heal itself eventually, but only once humans are gone. One thing I found especially interesting was the consideration of the economic value of nature, which ended up being roughly two times greater than the world's industrial wealth.

My only significant complaint is that the film is often rough in style, organization, and editing. The images sometimes feel out of place or even distracting from the message. Occasionally, the images rapidly jump between completely different environments, which can be hard to process. To be sure, most of the cinematography was excellent, but it just wasn't put together in the best way. Overall, it could have been more focused.

The 11th Hour is an insightful and inspiring documentary on one of the most important topics to date. It provides a balanced and comprehensive conceptual overview on the human role in global warming, but also expects viewers to take this knowledge out of the theater and implement it into their own lives. It is extremely educational experience.

Sheesh, what a mess.

If Americans are relying on documentaries like this to convince Joe the Redneck that anthropogenic climate change is real I understand why we all feel there is so much more work left to do. You see, the problem with the film is its complete lack of a narrative, one scientist/politician/activist after another, however respectable, snappily quipping about consumption, pollution, the oil economy, in no particular order does nothing to explain where we came from or where we are headed, or why. So the documentary teaches nothing new, it just juggles around the same themes, incoherently referencing the all correct verbiage to satisfy an green audience but neither inform nor empower it.

The visuals do not help, we can't go 5 seconds without seeing an iceberg disintegrate or tree being chopped down. After the first half hour it becomes like some sort weird sort of exercise in CIA-style mental conditioning. Does no good, indeed it destroys a viewer's concentration, rather than enriching or rewarding it. Also, it has to be said, some of visuals are entirely erroneous, for a the moment when told that human behaviour may cause the release of subterranean methane, why are we shown a clip of a sea vent? There are at least a dozen similar misleading visuals here, and as much as I'm into green politics, let's face it, with instances like there is a touch of propaganda to this documentary.

Conclusions? Save some energy, turn it off, read some George Monbiot instead.