The 11th Hour [2007]

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Audience Rating: Parental Guidance Binding: DVD EAN: 7321902183510 Format: PAL Label: Warner Home Video Manufacturer: Warner Home Video Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Warner Home Video Region Code: 2 Release Date: 2008-06-02 Running Time: 90 Studio: Warner Home Video Theatrical Release Date: 2007
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Editorial Reviews: The 11th Hour may not have enjoyed the profile of the last major documentary to tackle the issues and challenges of climate change (that’d be Al Gore’s engrossing Oscar-winner An Inconvenient Truth), but it’s no less compelling, and proves to be a thought-provoking feature in its own right. Producer and narrator Leonardo Di Caprio, who also shares a writing credit, is the glue that holds The 11th Hour together, and this diligent documentary presents a lot of information. What’s more, it balances its subject matter a little more accessibly than An Inconvenient Truth. The latter appeared to rush through the segment where it addressed the things we can do to help fight climate change, but The 11th Hour--in among some very hard-hitting material--makes sure that it devotes enough of its focus to the what-happens-next. To top it off, it’s attracted some heavyweight world figures to stand before the camera. Some you will have heard of (Professor Stephen Hawking and Mikhail Gorbachev, for instance), and others are less known, but the cumulative effect of their contributions gives The 11th Hour a gravity and power that is hard to ignore. And while occasionally you can’t help but feel it slips into being a little too preachy, it tackles a serious subject exceptionally well. A documentary absolutely not to be missed, for more than one reason. --Jon Foster
Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Moved to change my own behaviour Comment: Wow! What a film. Reminds me of a documentry I saw on the BBC called ' The Dodo's Guide To Surviving Extinction'. I can see this film being uncomfortable viewing for the business-as-usual mob which I am part of but will now start to detach from. This film was comprehensive in examining solutions of economics and sustainable consumer capitalism. It also explored the bigger human nature issues of how we get pleasure and define ourselves through objects and desires. I loved this bit. Anyway a must watch for everyone. I have ordered 5 copies to give to close people as Christmas presents instead of the usual decedant binge Christmas rubbish that will go to landfill eventually. Customer Rating: Summary: Best environmental film in decades Comment: Hands down the best environmental film I've seen. DiCaprio does a stellar job of covering a huge range of topics (the only one missing in my opinion is a discussion on nuclear power). Manages to convey the urgency facing us while offering some truly inspirational ways of looking at our current situation. If I could make films and I did a documentary on the planet and our current situation, this is probably what I'd like it to turn out like. Edit, 18 Oct, 2008: I find the review below titled 'Utter Rubbish' puzzling, and especially so that 5 people have found it helpful. The reviewer says 'Di Caprio is rubbish - he has clearly been hired to front this, is in it for about 15 mins max and has no interest or insight into his subject matter whatsoever.' Doesn't the reviewer realize that DiCaprio is not just the narrator but one of three who wrote the film? Customer Rating: Summary: A Villager's Perspective Comment: Film Review - The 11th Hour - The Village Hall, Littleham - October 7th 2008-10-08 I came away from this screening feeling bruised and battered having sat through what seemed like hours of interminable verbal assault. Not bad language you understand but the result of the Hollywood hand being applied to an otherwise, albeit unpalatable, important subject - Global Warming. After an introduction of staccato film bites showing perhaps half a second of major natural disasters, implying that they were the sole result of Global Warming, which, if you believe the Bible and other historical sources that cite regular natural calamities, is a difficult premise to take on board. The cinematic tricks diminished leaving the senses reeling and the head aching from the action and the noise. When they finally ceased there followed statement after statement on the various contributory causes of Global Warming from apparently erudite academics mainly from the USA. In itself an irritation when it is remembered that the rest of the world's academic community have been ringing the warning bells for half a century or more whilst the US slept. These sound bites went on and on and on requiring a level of concentration from the viewer last felt in yours truly when he crossed a 1000 foot deep ravine in Sumatra on a 4 inch wide bridge! I was determined not to switch off and was glad I didn't. Just occasionally there was relief from the persistent unloading of warnings of doom and disaster. These were the amazing statistics and convincingly presented evidence that emanated from the screen. For example, did you know that the Americans spend more on lawn care than the whole of the Indian continent's GDP! Now that is consumerism supreme. I was also pleased to be introduced to a Churchillian quote regarding the Americans. He apparently said "The Americans always get it right, but not before they've tried everything else first". Quite so. Furthermore, continuing the positive tone, I did find the contributions of Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy, to be very relevant. I was struck by his unselfish concern for the Earth, particularly his view that the Earth would be fine and that it would survive, irrespective of what happened to mankind. His view being that mankind, through their foolishness, may very well become extinct but we shouldn't worry too much about the Earth as it will recover in time. He painted the beautiful picture of an unadulterated earth of which man was no longer part. The introduction to the film by a lady whose name I did not hear and who apparently represented some organisation keen to publicise the Global Warming message whose name I don't believe was stated, suggested that it showed the way in which small communities could take their own action and thru these small beginnings across the globe would grow a global solution. As it turned out very little of the film alluded to this expectation that I had. In fact there was nothing that could have helped a small community like Littleham to take any steps to make a difference. Whilst there were oblique references to wind, sea, solar power and other so called green alternatives to energy generation, there were no practical suggestions as to how these could be applied. Sadly, I struggle to find any more positive comment to say about the experience, other than perhaps to remark that I wasn't disappointed in the contribution from David Suzuki, the environmental scientist. Apart from looking more and more like Confucious, his contribution was easy on the ear and the brain, demanding as it always does, further thought and consideration. I know it is controversial, but where was any reference to nuclear power? Why was there no detail about the "alternatives" that were so graphically presented such as the low energy train? We saw it but we are no wiser as to how we get one or build one. Apart from my patently obvious dislike for the film's content because of its failure to deliver, as a piece of manipulative cinema I suppose it might have succeeded in a perverse way - I can imagine many people coming from a showing, assuming they stayed the distance, wanting to take the easy way out and end it all. Not quite what we want or indeed, what I suspect the producers intended either. Now had they suggested a community wind turbine of sufficient capacity to put into the grid the equivalent number of kilowatts to those that which we in Littleham take out, then I think I and many others might have come away with something constructive to think, talk and act upon. If they had talked about electrolysers for our cars that would halve the output of carbon dioxide and other noxious pollutants from our vehicles exhausts, then I believe it would have sparked off some interest. If there had been suggestions for communities regarding heat exchangers using low grade terrestrial heat to warm public buildings, then we might have thought that there was something that we as a small community or as individuals might do to make our contribution to a remedy. But sadly there was none of this - or did I go to sleep? Sir Lorn Stakes Littleham Customer Rating: Summary: We need to make our minds ecologically sustainable Comment: The film is not so much about climate change. It is not so much about CO2. It is not so much about any ecological theme in particular, polluting the atmosphere, poisoning the oceans and waterways, exhausting the soil. It is about the inner truth that is ours, what has been our truth from the very start and what it is supposed to become if we are to survive as a species on this planet. Our inner truth is that we have a brain in connection with a body and its senses capturing the surrounding environment, which provides us with the possibility to think, to analyze, understand, synthesize and modelize what we can capture with and via our senses, the possibility to create tools and procedures that enable us to multiply our resources, and the possibility to communicate to other members of our species, present or future, through oral and written communication, live or recorded on various media, memory having been and still being on particularly efficient and economical medium. And I must admit I was nicely surprised by the maturity of the discourse. Instead of only culpabilizing us and making us feel guilty about what we do to the earth, it takes a different stand that insist on the absurdity of our present attitude that has developed to an extreme point over the last two centuries after the first industrial revolution. It does not preach going back to a pre-electricity age or to a pre-mechanical transportation age. It defends the fundamental principle of the human species in its long fight for survival and development: frugality, economy, saving, using resources with the principle that says as much as necessary but no more than needed. No waste at all, then no want eventually. And the best way not to waste is to use things and resources that are renewable, hence sustainable. Sustainability comes from the fact that we aim at economizing and never exhausting any source of whatever it is we want or need. At this level of reason and responsibility, the film turns marvelously poetic. The images, be they of catastrophes or of vital miracles, everyday natural life, are extremely beautiful and dealt without any fake editing, or so little. The beauty of the penguins walking to the ocean after their release on some beach is a moment of grace, and that shows what nature is all about: life and saving the natural resources we need to remain alive. The penguins go to the ocean the way we go to energy but they would never try to pollute or exhaust it. They will naturally live in equilibrium with their environment. And this we do not do right now. We have to change our way of thinking more than anything else. And that has to be done immediately, drastically and fast. That is only a question of political leadership, and not any maverick-ness or maverick-ity. We need calm, pondered upon and collective leadership that will give us the right, the duty, the responsibility to make the main choices and to manage and command the various procedures that will come out of these decisions. And once again the film turns poetic speaking of the mind, of the beauty of our spiritual capabilities. It valorizes in us our unique human creativity in order to make us reject our ubiquitous greed and desire to exploit to exhaustion if profit there is in it. We have to go back to the ecology of the mind our distant homo sapiens ancestors demonstrated when they started inventing tools to make hunting and fishing more efficient, and the domestication of animals and the cultivation of the earth to increase their collective resources in order to sustain the survival and development of the community with only one rule in their minds: economy, i.e. no more effort or work than necessary and no waste of what was gathered, hunted, fished or cultivated. The economy is part of the biosphere of this planet but the biosphere is not at the service of the economy. The economy must develop and can only do that by using the biosphere and its resources but in such a way that the biosphere is not exhausted, hence in a sustainable way. And that's the poetry of the message. You are not guilty of anything but humanity in general has grown irresponsible, hence wasteful and un-sustainable. Like a poem never uses one word or even syllable too many, we have to learn how to use what we need, not more, and make sure what we have used has been renewed or is being renewed for the future generations. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines Customer Rating: Summary: The best of the environmental documentaries Comment: Of the many documentaries I've watched lately, I am happy to say that The 11th Hour is the first that doesn't leave me feeling depressed, powerless and frustrated afterward--quite the opposite actually. The 11th Hour gets its points across with the help of some very reputable interviewees and some sometimes very graphic footage. At points, I was on the verge of tears. However, the solutions section of the film was inspiring. It is this aspect of this film that makes it the best of the modern environmental documentaries I've seen. I felt relieved that even despite the bleak picture painted (and trust me, it was BLEAK!), there really ARE things we can do to reverse climate change. They are manageable, not impossible, and effective. One scientist in the film made a very poignant point in particular: rather than lament this time we are living in as the end of civilisation as we know it and feeling the burden of the responsibility to "save the planet", we can instead choose to feel LUCKY to be born in a time when our creativity is called upon to completely reinvent all the man-made systems in place on Earth. What a privilege to be born in the generation who successfully turns things around! The first step is to raise awareness. I suggest you buy or rent this film, invite all your friends over and watch it together. More Reviews