Perfect Ten

Al Gore has made cunning use of the documentary format in An Inconvenient Truth, where he is at the centre of the political message about the challenges of global warming and climate change

Hardnews Bureau Delhi

Al Gore did not lose the 2000 US presidential election, and George W Bush did not win. It was not the proudest moment in the history of the oldest democracy of the world. Al Gore could have easily faded away into gentle oblivion. But he resisted that and, without the publicity flair of Bill Clinton, reinvented himself earnestly. In what may have seemed a pathetic act to cynics, he went on to teach journalism students. But his mind was working on other things. 

Gore was an inconspicuous vice-president in the eight years of the Clinton administration. Unlike in the case of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, there was no Machiavellian pact about succession. Al Gore is no brooding, intellectual and haughty Brown. He is earnest, sunny and an optimist. That was the difference between the No 2 at Downing Street and the No 2 at the White House.

It's hard to imagine, for instance, Brown making a documentary on global warming and climate change. If he did, he would probably say some intelligent things about the issue, but towards a political end. Al Gore is serious and cares about issues unrelated to his own political career. So, it is not surprising, that he chose a remote and non-emotive issue like global warming.

Gore did not pick the subject because it was gaining in political importance and moving up the public agenda in Western countries. Remember, he was present at the Kyoto climate summit in 1997. The US did not sign the pact but Al Gore absorbed the implications of the issues at stake through that summit. And he mulled over them over the years. The media overlooked his involvement with science and climate issues when he was vice-president, because these were relatively non-political subjects at the time. But he worked on them quietly, right through his senatorial stint.

When Gore set out to make the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, he was ready for the subject and its presentation.

The film is not as exciting as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which also won an Oscar like Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. But that is because Moore is everything that Al Gore would never want to be. Gore is not bilious, does not have the swagger of a street fighter, and is not willing to exaggerate to prove his point. It is this very sobriety, the preferred mode of Al Gore, which makes him so much more credible. Moore is not easily believable, even when he speaks nothing but the truth, because he is perceived as a man willing to bend facts to score a point. Al Gore, on the other hand, is more likely to get a fair hearing; people are willing to accept his points even when they differ with him over the details.

Credibility is a huge issue for any documentary filmmaker. And Al Gore stands on firm ground on this matter.

An Inconvenient Truth is interesting because it does not have Gore posing as a Good Samaritan who wants to do the right thing. He does not hide behind the mask of a passionate environmentalist. As a matter of fact, he stands at the very centre of the film as a narrator, politician, former vice-president, and senator.  And the documentary, very easily, turns into a political campaign film—no apologies offered.