bemoreeco

With the current credit crunch, climate change has once again been pushed to one side in the name of self-interest, a shift that is a central conceit of many of the films in this list. We are not suggesting all of these films are great entertainment (though a few are cool movies), but all they do, in some small way, make you think about the environment and our impact on it.

So in reverse order;

10. Fire Down Below (1997)

There are two taglines that tell you all you need to know about this prophetic masterpiece starring the king of the with-your-hair-neatly-tied-back fighting style, Steven Seagal. Tagline one: ‘One Man. One Secret. One Chance in Hell.’ Tagline two: ‘Beneath a land of wealth and beauty hides a secret that could kill millions. Undercover has never run so deep.’ In all seriousness, as truly awful as this film is, it was important because it showed that even men as completely and utterly self-possessed as Seagal were taking notice of this thing called the environment, and that’s kinda a big deal.

9. Syriana (2007)

You might ask why this movie is on the list. After all, it’s a political thriller. However, it’s about the oil industry, the single biggest polluting force on the planet. It serves to expose the raw underbelly of capitalism and the brutal ramifications that actions taken in the name of profit and politics can have on the environment. Plus George Clooney sports an extraordinary beard.

8. Waterworld (2005)

A real dog of a film and the beginning of Kevin Costner’s self-inflicted career suicide. Easily the most horrific of the movies on this list as it posits that one day Dennis Hopper will be allowed to wear an eye patch and shave his head. If you don’t want that to happen, help save the polar ice caps before they melt and drown most of the planet. This was once, famously, the most expensive movie ever made. It fish-tanked at the box office, causing nary a splash.

7. Soylent Green (1973)

A hardcore dystopian vision of the future where pollution has raised most of the Earth to boiling point and the overcrowded populace is kept alive by eating a mysterious food known as Soylent Green. If you want to spoil the surprise and find out what Soylent Green is, a quick Google search will give you all you need to know, but watching the movie without prior knowledge renders it all the more harrowing. Charlton Heston sure knew how to pick out a twist or two.

6. Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey (1988)

Based on a true story, this is a beautiful film featuring Sigourney Weaver and a bunch of monkeys, a cast she was familiar with after working on Ghostbusters. This movie works on a smaller, more intimate scale than the others on the list, and presciently illustrates the dangers, and resulting tragedies, of fighting for what you believe in when those around you are only interested in their own profits – Dian Fossey was brutally murdered in her cabin one night, the identity of the murderers unknown.

5. The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

Yes, it’s a dull film, and no, Dennis Quaid doth not a leading man make, but the initial scenes of devastation caused by a totally FUBAR ecosystem make your fingers and toes go cold. True, climate change is gradual, but as this film ably demonstrates, our tolerances are wafer thin. And when, even now, the weather forecasters are throwing a wobbly over suntan weather in October and permafrost in late May, it might have been better to simply call this film ‘Tomorrow’. Still, at least we can rely on someone better than Dennis Quaid when the time comes, right? Right?

4. Godzilla (1998/1954)

Granted, when you are being chased by an overgrown radioactive killer lizard, the likelihood is that you won’t be wondering where it’s come from, only where it’s going. But Godzilla is a product of the nuclear age, and a warning about arrogantly and ignorantly messing with nature. And when nature gets angry, it takes a big bite out of your Apache helicopter.

3. Silent Running (1972)

A brief rundown of the plot for those who have not seen it: set in the future, Bruce Dern plays an astronaut entrusted with a precious cargo – the last remaining forests from Earth. Earth itself is now a barren, overcrowded wasteland, the only greenery existing in domes on vast spaceships orbiting Saturn. The film centres around an order sent from Earth to jettison the domes and destroy them so the ships can be used for other purposes. Freeman Lowell (Dern) is the only one to resist. The melancholy ending of the film stays with you long after the rest of the movie is a hazy memory. Silent Running explores the contradiction between the society we live in and the society we want to live in, and then removes it to a location and time we are unfamiliar with.

2. An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

Parodied and deriled by some, exalted and lauded by others, Al Gore’s documentary touched a nerve where many, many others had failed before. Perhaps it was seeing a former presidential candidate devoting himself to a cause that for a long time has been depicted as the branding iron for society’s outsiders, maybe it was the unbearably sad image of a polar bear floating away on a block of ice with nowhere to go, or it could have been the graphs and scissor lift. The truth is, Gore’s campaign is successful because this is only one filmed version of a talk he has given hundreds of times all over the world, communicating with people one on one, as a presidential candidate tries to do when running for office, only Gore’s ambition is a universal one.

1. WALL•E (2008)

Youngsters will most likely remember the inspired chase scenes that dominate the second half of the movie, but for those old enough to know what climate change is and what it potentially means, it’s the heartbreaking opening of the film that stays with you. To see a lonely little robot delicately stacking cube after cube of garbage into skyscrapers (a fantastic visual metaphor) is a brutal indictment of the way we treat our planet, as well as an evocative portrayal of altruism versus the dream of capitalism. Ultimately, it seems, we as an audience can only believe that a robot would treat Earth the way it deserves to be treated. To see a human doing what WALL•E does would be hard to stomach.

Source: Andy Mayer at www.recycle.co.uk