A clear-eyed and vital portrait of the times we live in, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Charles Ferguson’s latest documentary, “Time To Choose,” is an urgent call to arms about global climate change, examining many of the challenges to overcome it and the already-available and increasingly viable solutions that are presenting themselves each day. Incredibly comprehensive in scope, “Time To Choose” sets up the notion of a ticking clock against what is now a global threat humanity cannot ignore.
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A globe-trotting affair, sometimes shot illegally and covertly, Ferguson’s movie is packed with information, but at an economical 97 minutes it’s presented cleanly in three chapters, with sets of interconnected dilemmas and myriad solutions. Chapter One centers on coal and electricity, and breaks down the problems with these kinds of non-renewable energy sources. Using the personal to illuminate the universal, Ferguson centers much of this chapter on the devastating repercussions of mountain top removal in the Appalachian regions of West Virginia. And this section touches upon both environmental and socio-economic fallout from a region which has essentially become a lunar dead zone for the decimated communities whose lands are now worthless.
Parts two and three center on oil and cars, and land and food respectively, and follow a similar, but effective pattern: a cogent, sometimes chilling articulation of pressing issues that need immediate attention, while delineating the various obstacles and solutions. And in the latter elements there are upbeat notes. It’s not too late to change course, the documentary posits, but it is, as the title insists, too late to be in denial. We as a society, and more importantly our governments, must elect to do something about climate change before the outcome is irreversible. It’s in these moments speaking with myriad experts, world-renowned entrepreneurs, innovators, and thought-leading pioneers that “Time To Choose” becomes utterly sobering in its statistical conclusions of what needs to be accomplished and on the tight timetable that our current environmental recklessness has led us to.
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Narrated by Oscar Isaac, an immediacy courses through the pulse of “Time To Choose” which features some incredibly harrowing footage of pollution, toxic regions, devastated lands, and shocking environmental tragedies. But Ferguson (who helmed the stellar documentaries “Inside Job” and “No End In Sight”) has a steady hand throughout, somberly detailing the nature of our current crisis without painting a bleak portrait. One of the key terms floated in the film is “runaway climate change”: the event horizon apex we never want to reach.
Featuring lots of talking heads, environmentalist Jane Goodall, Greenpeace director Kumi Naidoo, environmentally progressive Senator of California Jerry Brown, author and food guru Michael Pollan, scientists like James Hansen and former U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, “Time To Choose” can seem a little conventional at times, formally, but there’s also a elegance of craft to Ferguson’s clean schema. All of these figures are invested in saving the planet which gives all the distressing information a critical sheen of possibility and hope.
Most disturbing in “Time To Choose” are the levels of corruption revealed in developing nations like China, Indonesia and India. As the documentary shows, many of these countries are severe polluters, China being one of the most distressingly extreme culprits, and some of their practices seem hopelessly backward. Tellingly, not one executive from the coal, oil or electricity industry turns up in the film; all offers to appear in the movie and tell their side of the story are turned down.
If the doc can feel a little overwhelming at times, it may depend on your faith in human nature, but it never resorts to fear-mongering. One of the most compelling arguments in the film is how Ferguson details all the renewable energy sources — wind, solar, electric powered cars — and how they are quickly becoming the more sustainable, economically advisable choices. Perhaps at some point, goodwill won’t matter and a desperation to lessen the strain on the wallet will be all the convincing people need.
Arguably the most persuasive and compelling of Ferguson’s films to date, “Time To Choose” is an imperative, essential essay on our climate change crisis, and if it ever feels didactic, it’s counterpointed by its very real and very human nature. As one of the advisors says in the film, fighting climate change is not just a giant scientific, technological challenge, but a moral one that’s part of a crucial struggle for the future of the world. [B+]