The film presents, exactly as it happened, a conference of officials assigned to advise Congress on the global-warming crisis. But their talk doesn't quite become action. If you see only one movie this year about a super-geek task force of scientists, academics, lawyers, activists, and bureaucrats who meet in a hotel conference room in St.
Petersburg, Florida, in 1980 to hash out a manifesto about climate change, make that movie “A Statement” (at least, until a better one comes along). The conference I described really did take place. It was a mission dreamed up by the U.S.
The issue of global warming was on the map, and the committee, gathering in Florida over a weekend for three days of meetings, was asked to devise a mission statement that would assess the dangers of climate change and make recommendations to Congress as to what, exactly, should be done about it. The movie, as you’ve likely gathered, is not a tale of high-speed helicopter chases and daredevil heists. The conference — 20 men and women pontificating, arguing, strategizing, hashing out the truth — is the entire movie.
I’m someone who actually thinks that talk is action (just ask any of my friends). And I love hearing issues argued over intelligently, which makes me the target audience for a movie like “A Statement.” That said, I watched the film with seriously divided feelings. On paper, “A Statement” sounds like an interesting movie, but it’s at once talky and flat, grabby and meandering, impassioned and neutral.
It wants to be a “firebrand” docudrama, yet I can’t imagine who the audience is going to be for it. My heartless prediction: next to no one. Not because the film is bad, but because it’s like an endless magazine article in movie form.
McCarthy and his co-screenwriters, Thomas Bidegain and Noé Debré, decided not to “dramatize” the conference. Instead, they dug the dialogue right out of the actual transcripts, presenting the conversations verbatim, which is on some level a daring choice. And McCarthy is certainly a skilled enough filmmaker to get the effect he was going for.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
