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• Kirsten Mae Cadungog

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Reaction Paper for BEFORE THE FLOOD

Introduction: Before the Flood is a documentary travelogue film about climate change directed by Fisher Stevens. The film was produced by Fisher Stevens, Leonardo DiCaprio, James Packer, Brett Ratner, Trevor Davidoski, and Jennifer Davisson Killoran, with Martin Scorsese as the film’s executive producer. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2016, and was released in theaters on October 21, before it aired on the National Geographic Channel on October 30. The documentary talks about all the changes that Leonardo DiCaprio has noticed in the environment on his 3-year journey across different countries after being assigned as the United Nation’s Messenger of Peace. By visiting ancient melting glaciers and levelled tropical forests, DiCaprio unearths an urgent situation and the world's dependence on fossil fuels. In his encounters, it was highlighted that some people are still being blind about global warming, while some of them showed concern and already made actions to reduce their carbon footprint. Along with DiCaprio, the documentary's subjects include Barack Obama, Pope Francis, Sunita Narain, Anote Tong, John Kerry, Elon Musk, Alvin Lin, Farwiza Farhan, Dr. Enric Sala, Gidon Eshel, Ban KiMoon, and many more notable people such as American politicians. The documentary was part of National Geographic’s engagement to covering climate change and it was made widely available on various platforms. Synopsis/Summary: The documentary really suggested the urgency of the people’s action towards climate change and it was effective in achieving its goal. The goal of the documentary is to inform the public of what’s happening to our planet, and what we can do to prevent it from becoming a total wasteland. DiCaprio was right that we do not have to be scientists in order to raise awareness and act against climate change because if we do not act together, we will surely perish. In the first few scenes of the film, DiCaprio narrated about his early childhood, particularly about the fact that he grew up with a print of Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” hanging above his bed. The print helped him instill an awareness of social and environmental degradation from a young age. The film is named after the middle panel of the print, referred to as the “Humankind before the Flood”, which acts as an allegorical warning to the world of what could come next if it fails to act on climate change. However, he doubted himself if he knows much about the phenomenon, even after he is named by Ban Ki-moon as the United Nation’s Messenger of Peace on Climate Change. His doubt was caused by previous media criticisms,

attacking him for his lack of scientific credentials and celebrity lifestyle. However, DiCaprio is frank about how his fame has afforded him such a privileged perspective, that he had a talk with Al Gore in the early 2000s and it was the first time that he heard about global warming as the timely and most urgent issue, whilst having no idea what it was about. After viewing oil sands, narwhal whales, and melted Arctic ice, DiCaprio explains in his view what has changed in the time since he received Gore’s climate lesson. Everyone was focused on small individual actions back then, but it is pretty clear that we are way beyond that now and things have taken a massive turn for the worse. No movie is complete without the bad guys. And the film was clever to stress the role that corporate interest have played in spreading wrong information about climate change. A cast of so-called villains is introduced, ranging from right-wing newspapers and television networks in the United States through to politicians and front groups. All of them seek to cast doubt on the science and, in doing so, attack climate scientists. Even upright and devoted scientists who are trying to raise awareness about global warming, such as Michael Mann from the Penn State Earth System Science Center, were called as frauds and threatened by front groups and politicians funded by corporate interests. It was frustrating to know that people with impressive credentials like some politicians and large companies are the ones who mislead the public due to their greed and interest in the money from fossil fuels. It was made clear that these people do not have to win a legitimate scientific debate as long as they can gain from the public’s usage of costly materials. We have known about the problem of climate change for decades, but some are just blinded by wrong information and practices. The world right now would not suffer much if we had taken the science of climate change seriously back then. The most particularly moving conversation happened when Sunita Narain asked how a nation like the United States could ask a nation like India to risk its own, more tenuous, economic development with environmental measures that the United States itself has been hesitant to adopt. If the United States doesn’t stand as an example of how to conserve energy, how can it expect other countries to follow their so-called initiative? It seemed like a slap of truth for all the viewers, regardless if they are American or not. As Narain said, energy access in India is as much a challenge as climate change. Poverty makes it difficult for their country to address the impacts of climate change. This is one fact that developed countries should look into. Some have said DiCaprio’s high carbon footprint in general and in the making of this film is a problem for his role as a messenger, but I am not sure. DiCaprio even addresses the large carbon footprint that he himself has left on the planet, admitting that he sometimes questions the morality of what he’s doing. However, DiCaprio has the good sense to address criticisms upfront. The production took efforts to offset its carbon footprint during filming, including taking on a voluntary carbon tax. I think it might even be an asset that helps move the conversation along. Pointing out hypocrisy on climate change is often just another way of delaying action and diverting attention from our own need to engage politically with deeper resolve. After all, the majority of people in developed countries have acquired huge levels of ecological debt. In many ways it’s a great film, and I think he is a great ambassador for all of this.

Reaction: On the whole, the documentary is worth watching for the people of today’s generation. Furthermore, DiCaprio is a highly effective audience surrogate, asking scientists and leaders the sorts of to-the-point questions that many viewers might well have for themselves. He’s not afraid to sometimes appear uninformed, nor to acknowledge that his own carbon footprint is certainly larger than most. I admired that he was situated as a learner rather than a teacher. Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth is a useful comparison here. On the one hand that film was a huge success in drawing attention to an issue that had been ignored, but it also proved to be politically polarizing because the messenger was a professor and a politician partly associated with dramatic failure. In Before the Flood you get a better sense, through DiCaprio, of the existential dimensions of the climate challenge — the fragility and perplexity of a single human life, and the challenge of living it well. DiCaprio is an actor, not a scientist or a politician, and I am guessing, given the way his career has gone, that he hasn’t undergone several years of higher education like many of the people he was interviewing. Leo is clearly highly intelligent, but you can sense, in a way that is noticeable and even touching, that he is often at the edge of his competence, straining but still succeeding in getting to the nub of the complex information he is being presented with. It is in this respect that he shows his deepest moral leadership because we need that kind of intellectual courage. The film’s heart is in the right place. Everyone needs to find a way to take these issues seriously, and that stands as the documentary’s most important takeaway message. Before the Flood is a film made for mass consumption in an effort to inform and spur the public into action. In that respect, it’s incredibly effective. There’s a fantastic blend of cold hard facts from expert scientists as well as discussions with world leaders and those directly affected by the effects of climate change. It pleasantly blends a mix of fear-inducing facts, suffering and natural beauty. The mixture of intense emotions and powerful images made the information humanly tangible, easy to digest and worthy of action. The documentary brings attention to climate change and calls for action. This thing should be seen by as many people as possible. Climate change is real, and it’s scary. Our first line of defense is an informed public. And while a feature film couldn’t possibly encapsulate everything there is to know on the subject, Before the Flood serves as a significant piece of education that will hopefully spur people to enact their own further research. This film could incite the people’s action in sustaining the earth.

Written by Kirsten Mae B. Cadungog