Gore is no bore in the compelling 'An Inconvenient Truth'

Al Gore faces an unenviable dilemma in "An Inconvenient Truth." As a high-profile public figure, he's in a rare position to draw the kind of media attention a climate-change documentary could hardly hope for otherwise. At the same time, too much of that attention will inevitably focus on the messenger, not the message.

Paramount Classics 'An Inconvenient Truth' 4 out of 5 stars The verdict: The former vice president's personal history enhances his environmentalist message. Director: Davis Guggenheim Starring: Al Gore Run time: 100 minutes Release date: May 24, 2006 Rating: PG for mild thematic elements. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'An Inconvenient Truth'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

You can hear the man's heart breaking in interviews, as he begs journalists to think for once not about elections and their four- or eight-year aftermaths, but about human activities that promise to have thousand-year-plus consequences. As he insists during the film, the issue at hand is not political but moral: Given the facts we have, how can we possibly justify not fixing a problem that will almost certainly wreak havoc on our grandchildren's world?

Readers who take issue with the words "almost certainly" would do well to watch the film before arguing. Gore takes pains to debunk the idea that there's any scientific disagreement over the basic facts of global warming. Freed of the sound-bite constraints of public political discourse, he lays out 30 years' worth of evidence, while eviscerating the propaganda with which the oil industry has clouded the issue. (He makes a telling comparison to the tobacco industry, which long after learning of smoking's health effects ran ads such as "More doctors smoke Camels!")

Gore was often faulted for a lack of charisma on the campaign trail, but he has more than enough personality to succeed in this lecture-hall environment. Giving the latest version of a speech he has delivered a thousand times before, Gore blends facts and figures, humor, and smartly chosen pieces of personal history. The latter is more essential than it sounds: His interest in climate change was sparked by a college professor who was the first to suggest measuring the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; Gore has been in the political vanguard on the issue ever since, as we see in clips of early Congressional hearings.

Along the way, Gore evidently has befriended most of the scientists in the field. In passing their research along, he humanizes statistics in a way few news stories can. He also explains how some of their findings are a bigger deal than most of us realize: Melting ice caps, for instance, aren't only a concern because they'll raise the sea level around the globe. Ice also serves as a mirror to reflect sunlight that otherwise would be absorbed by the earth as heat — less ice equals more atmospheric heat, equals much less ice, equals ... you get the idea.

By its nature, the film walks a fine line when addressing how these trends should be tackled by public policy. Gore doesn't hide his frustration with the current administration, which has generally paid as much attention to scientists' warnings as a 10-year-old boy does to an overprotective parent. But the film depicts Gore's personal history with President Bush (and with the president's father, who ridiculed Gore's environmental concerns) as trivial when compared to the issues at hand — a reason to move the discussion away from the us-versus-them playing field, toward a forum acknowledging that (like it, believe it, or not) we're all facing this problem together.