An_Inconvenient_Truth_-_Al_Gore

Documentaries have the specific intent of conveying a reality to an audience, promoting certain actions or responses. Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth is an issue-driven documentary film released in 2006, placing it within today’s environmental crisis. The subject of the film is global warming and depicts former United States Vice President Al Gore’s global slideshow tour educating his audience of this. Through incorporation of actual footage, use of animation, powerful visual juxtaposition and an effective communication of relevant statistics, Guggenheim attempts to warn his audience of the very real, human-caused threat of global warming. Guggenheim creates a sense of reality throughout the documentary using an incorporation of actual footage. Al Gore is established as the documentary’s presenter through Guggenheim’s use of footage of Gore’s tour of the world, which was dedicated to informing and educating audiences of “the mission he had been pursuing for all these years" on the subject of global warming. Footage from within Gore’s tour car communicates to the audience Gore’s persistent intent on spreading his message, bringing validity to his claims. Guggenheim further uses non-diegetic music to set a sincere and solemn mood to the cut-scenes within his car to convey the importance of the issue to the audience as Gore’s life-long goal, emphasised through Gore’s voiceover which weaves in events that changed his world view, including his Harvard education in environmental areas. In his documentary, Guggenheim also uses the technique of visual juxtaposition. In his slideshow, Al Gore compares specific locations around the world, screening shots of glaciers that once showed vast expenses of ice, now gone, “This is Argentina twenty years ago... The same glacier, today.” The use of juxtaposition exaggerates a worldwide message that is depicted through the collection of ‘then and now’ photographs. This display of still photographs provides visual evidence of the significant impact of global warming over the entirety of the world, therefore alerting the audience of the magnitude of the crisis. It also brings to the audience’s attention, the reality that this is a present problem of today’s era. A segment of the documentary includes a comic animation from the popular television cartoon program, Futurama. Guggenheim is able to successfully explain global warming and describes a cheap, temporary solution of regularly dropping a giant ice cube into the ocean, “thus solving the problem once and for all!” Through effective use of animation, Guggenheim illustrates the ignorance of our “handsome politians” to the extent of global warming, and their determination to lesser it’s significance. The use of humor in this animation is also entertaining for younger audiences and as a result, provides a wider target audience for the documentary; therefore more people watch the film and are informed and educated on the subject of global warming. In his slideshow, Gore presents statistics relevant to the issue of global warming; scientific data that supports his claims. This includes visual graphs indicating present day CO2 levels and the Earth’s temperature as well as subsequent levels in fifty year’s time, which are “off the charts”. Guggenheim has included this particular part of Gore’s presentation in his documentary to stress the need of society to change and effectively communicates the consequences our Earth will be facing unless the amount of human-generated greenhouse gases is significantly reduced in the near future. Instead of editing or using cut-scenes only, Guggenheim clearly emphasizes this point by placing this whole section of Gore’s presentation in his documentary. Documentaries have the intention of influencing an audience in order to produce actions or responses. With the help of his slideshow, Al Gore aims to educate the public about the severity of global warming. In his film, Guggenheim successfully communicates the consequences and effects global warming will have on this Earth through the use of animation, statistics, actual footage and juxtaposition of still photographs.