On the Scariest Film of the Year with Before the Flood

Ten years ago Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth sought to raise awareness of the dangers of global warming. Now, Fisher Stevens and Leonardo DiCaprio and treading the same ground, albeit in a more shocking and less pie chart way.

Before the Flood is beautifully bookended with a story of a tableaux DiCaprio had in his bedroom as a child. It is a rare insight into one of cinema’s most talented actors and proves his reason for campaigning so long for climate change awareness and for wanting to make this documentary. It also offers us a neat guide to where this documentary thinks we are and where we are going. It will come as no surprise that since Gore the situation has only worsened. DiCaprio himself describes his own view as that of a sceptic for what can now be done and after finishing this incredible film it is hard to disagree. Scientists offer hope, but only if change is made in the right direction by powerful people acting now. Yet, powerful people won’t act because doing nothing makes money now and, well, the future is the future’s problem.

DiCaprio holds together Before the Flood with skill; he allows his interviewees to speak, maintaining his integrity in his own belief throughout. His amazement and wonder becomes our own as he travels the globe, fully aware that he not the perfect ambassador for climate change, but passionate enough to carry the message and responsible enough to not renege on the role. It is a sobering film and perhaps the scariest of the year for what is changing for the better is changing too slow and recent US elections will only exacerbate the problem. It is a sad indictment on the laziness of most people and the corruption and the selfishness of the powerful that we are still in this situation ten years after An Inconvenient Truth. We will look back on Before the Flood and wonder why we did nothing.