An Inconvenient Truth boiled down an enormous subject
consisting of frequently hard-to-impart quantitative data, then
producer-narrator Leonardo DiCaprio’s macro-environmental documentary,
The 11th Hour, takes matters a step further, exploring modern society,
the symptoms of our destructive relationships with Earth’s ecosystems
and natural resources, and what we can do to change course.

The title of this PG-rated film (an ever-so-brief snippet of a baby seal clubbing
earns you that, in case you were wondering) conveys the undeniable
sense of urgency and passion imparted here. Featuring an array of
interviews with a wide variety of thinkers from all sorts of fields — everyone from economists, renowned scientist Stephen Hawking, and
former CIA head James Woolsey, to business leaders, sustainable design
expert Bruce Mau, and former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev — The 11th Hour is at times a bit pedantic. Streamlined structure isn’t
necessarily its strong spot; while some of the digressive bits are fascinating (the notion that the human
mind “invented” the concept of the future, choosing a path of survival once mitigated, now amplified), others sap the movie’s forward-moving momentum, if only fitfully.

Yet co-directors Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners
systematically reveal as propaganda claims that environmental damage is
merely a myth. They also shrewdly assay how a so-called “consumer
democracy mindset” has rendered us largely ignorant of the basic terms
by which we live in concert with the Earth and how, without better
caretaking, humans will face the same fate as 99.9999% of all species
to ever inhabit this planet: extinction. As such, The 11th Hour
is an important and engaging film that presents a persuasive case — morally, fiscally, and existentially — for
massive activism and change. For the original capsule review, from CityBeat, click here.