There’s no mistaking the leanings of director Jeff Orlowski’s cast here who set out to prove, in the most tangible way they can, the existence of, and the damaging effect that Global Warming is having on our planet. Focussing on the work of photographer and former scientist James Balog the film we see his creation of the Extreme Ice Survey and its intention to photograph decaying glaciers around the world.
Initially a sceptic of global warming Balog had his views altered dramatically when he saw first hand the effect it was having across the globe. On photographic shoots and work with National Geographic he realised the severity of the situation and became determined to share this with as many people as he could. An article for National Geographic saw him photograph the changing landscape of the Antarctic and the shocking rate of calving (the term for glaciers breaking off into the Ocean) quickly becoming the magazine’s most read feature and paving the way for this feature length documentary in an attempt to capture a wider audience.
Knowing the answer lay in the changing ice, Balog went about documenting the change in these great colossal structures in a way that could be simply acknowledged and understood en masse. The film introduces the rest of his ensemble, rounding up the crew as if in an Oceans film or, more suitably, Philippe Petit’s bunch of daring sidekicks in Man on Wire. Between the engineers, photographers, scientists and science geeks they manage to create cameras that would survive such harsh conditions and go about setting them up in spots in Alaska, Montana, Iceland and Greenland where we meet the closest a glacier will get to celebrity status having been the one to send out the iceberg that sank the Titanic.
Capturing these images is no mean feat (one effort sees Balog and a young assistant literally hanging over a bottomless pit) and the excursions begin to take their toll on the intrepid photographer, in particular his already dodgy knee. This is an opportunity to show the action man nature of Balog as he heroically soldiers on over the icy mountains with nothing but a pair of sticks to hold up his amputated stump of a leg - a grand exaggeration but there’s an element of Chasing Ice that plays up to one mans relentless pursuit of change at all costs. We see him break down in tears at one point and there are fleeting moments spent with his family as even they understand the noble quest of our protagonist.
A large amount of the film’s success rides on the images and the impact they have. It’s packed with powerful, provoking visuals of these dying giants and interspersed with Balog’s photography highlighting the magical, other worldly qualities of the architectural marvels and white canvases. The film’s payoffs are the shots they were able to capture from the stationed cameras and when at the end they are shown the results are staggering. We see the largest ever glacier calve recorded on camera, the size of Manhattan and 3 times the height of the Empire State Building and time-lapse footage of the glaciers receding at a rate far greater than at any point in history. These images are, says Balog, key to realising the dangers of climate change. Despite the relatively small temperature change, the altered atmosphere and change this has on the air itself is far more significant with these glaciers acting as a canary in a coalmine alerting us to significant danger.
Much like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Chasing Ice may be met with acclaim among those who believe whole-heartedly in the perils of the topic but equally with a general sigh of ambivalence by an unwilling majority. The recent hype around the Kony 2012 project showed that passion projects can be seen in large numbers and while those featured here are unlikely to come under the levels of scrutiny Invisible Children did, they may miss out too on the amount of coverage it they received.
We are not patronised or offered a quick fix scheme as Balog realises it will not come from a film but hopes this offers enough definitive evidence to enough people to demand some kind of reaction as he takes his finding higher up the government hierarchy. Orlowski has certainly helped his cause whose cinematic portraits fittingly elevate Chasing Ice into more than just science lectures for the screen.
Matthew Walsh
Rating: NC
Director: Jeff Orlowski
Release Date: 14th December 2012 (UK)
No comments:
Post a Comment