Horn11Hour

**Title:** The 11 th Hour **Director:**  Leila Conners + Nadia Conners **Release Year:** 2007

**Argument:** This film really runs the gammit of environmental issues and doesn't get too specific with any of them in particular. The argument is that through human greed manifested in capitalism and its intrusion into the political system has created a unstable climate that is rapidly warming towards a tipping point where large storms become normal. This process has been slowly evolving through the culture we have created for ourselves, especially in the nature of propaganda from the removal of Adam and Eve from the peaceful situation of the Garden of Eden to current consumer advertising.

**Problems:** The sustainability issues in this film are multiple and often don't directly connect. The beginning of the piece focuses highly on what is actually occurring in the environment and how our early history provoked the current natural responses. The piece is quick and dense focusing on greenhouse gases, extreme natural disasters and their impact on locals, the melting arctic, emergence of environmental refugees. An important aspect of this section is the discussion of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment by 1300 scientists that conducted global research. The importance is that a global panel of scientists have merged together and seen drastic changes universally stemming from similar problems plaguing the world. The piece then goes into a discussion of the forces that are blocking change. Again there is such a wide variety of information that detail is completely lacking. The key arguments in this section though are the inflexibility of our government and the inability of politicians to reinterpret the Constitution or even write a new one that is more in line with our current culture. Another problem is the bubble in which we live that protects us from realizing how the majority of the world lives in extreme poverty. The economic system is blamed finally, specifically the amount of money that has seeped its way into the political system. Government is becoming the bridge between public opinion and public policy that is getting in the way of progress, meaning it needs to be re-imagined.

**Persuasive:** The amount of information provided gave a wide array of problems and sources for these problems that could then lead to the seeking of other films or information regarding many problems. By utilizing heavy science and a wide array of scientific specialists the film builds a definite credential backing, besides that their names and titles aren't included in film. One part of specific interest to me was a discussion regarding the value of nature and its necessary inclusion in the economic system. The attempt by economists was to determine how much work nature actually does for society and it was determined that it performs 35 trillion dollars worth of value. The very nature of the way business school is taught must be change so that the ends are the quality of life and growth is the means, not the reversal which has happened where growth is the end.

**Not Compelled:** Maybe it is because of how involved and knowledgeable I have become on many of these issues, but the shotgun nature of the film was extremely unappealing to me. I thought that the film was too quick and the complete lack of explanation simply made it seem like a bunch of bloated scientists rambling about secret events and conspiracies. There were no relatable characters or even local topics that were spoken of besides how we should be blamed for being “greedy” beings. Even the opening sequence is fear provoking showing the cacophony of global disasters and putting a soundtrack of heavy metal music over the footage. The footage is constant and large scale, forcing away the human connection component to an even greater degree.

**Audience:** It is really hard to peg the audience for this film as I don't understand who would benefit from the knowledge and attitudes that were provoked from the discussions. I personally wouldn't recommend the movie to anyone who truly wants to understand the problems we are being faced with. If I was to guess at the target audience I would think they were aiming for the average american that has little knowledge of climate change, and targeting them through ignorance and using scare tactics to change their opinions. Honestly I think films like this are no longer helpful to awareness causes.

**Enhancement:** The movie could use a major slowing down and focusing on specific issues instead of such a broad array of topics.

**Intervention:** Again a weak point of this film is the transition between actually solving problems and the scale of the problems. They actual focus primarily on the role of the designer in the coming years. The designer is now required to think in a complete cyclical way about how something is built up and then take apart and reused as well as how to keep operating energies and emissions as close to zero as possible. One of the strongest messages of the movie is the optimism that is portrayed by most of the scientists interviewed. “We get to reimagine every single thing we do. What a great time to be born and be alive because we get to completely change the world.”

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