How
To Let Go Of The World: Written and directed by Josh
Fox. Starring: Josh Fox. Running Time: 125 minutes.
Rating: 4/4
Almost
as soon as I saw the How To Let Go
trailer, I realized I’d been desperately wishing for a movie like
this. For all the positive news in the
fight against climate change, there is still such a long way to go and so many
ways things can go wrong that it is impossible to completely avoid moments of
despair. I am certainly no stranger to
feeling despair over the future of our world, and I know many others are as
well.
Josh
Fox begins his latest work by describing the moment when he fell into this
seemingly intractable despair- after celebrating the triumph of his hometown
over efforts by the fracking industry to develop nearby forests (which inspired
his Oscar-nominated work Gasland, he
was shaken out of his reverie when he found out a tree he’d planted years
before as a child was now dying, victim of a particular type of woody adelgid,
whose destructive range has been spreading North thanks to the effects of
climate change.
Rattled
by the implications of this, he begins a series of interviews with climate
experts of various stripes and backgrounds, and the overlaying descriptions
they provide of the many thousand small ways that alterations in the climate
are rapidly building into a truly global catastrophe for both the natural world
and human society leaves him feeling, in his own repeated word, “overwhelmed,”
completely at a loss as to how to grasp the scope of the disasters
unfolding. If it’s already too late to
avoid losing much of what we love in the world, how can we even begin to
grieve?
Upon
hitting this rock-bottom, Fox’s first instinct was to stay home and just shut
it all away. His second ran directly
counter to the first- if he’d hit such a miserable low contemplating the coming
tidal wave of climate change, there must be others who’d reached the same
point. And he resolved to go out into
the world, find them, and find out if and how they were able to pick themselves
back up and keep going, in spite of all they stood to lose.
His
journey eventually encompassed over 12 countries and led to his meeting an
astounding and inspiring variety of people from every background imaginable;
independent locals in the Amazon who work to track down the latest oil leaks,
boatsmen from various Pacific Islands who banded together to literally stop an
Australian coal tanker in its tracks (while shouting “We aren’t drowning, we
are fighting!”), community organizers who stuck around after Hurricane Sandy to
provide for New York and New Jersey locals abandoned by the authorities, a
mother working to raise awareness of smog pollution in Beijing, a local African
chief using small solar panels to light up village schools after dark, and many
others.
Much
of this film’s power is its acknowledgement of the fact that these are all
small people, taking small steps. And it
might be too late, and even if more people did stuff like this it could still
end up being not enough. But there is
something powerful in the effort. For
Fox, it’s a reminder of the parts of us and our societies that can never
change, no matter what happens with the climate. Familial love, the power of community bonds,
and the importance of helping each other out when in need, are the sort of
things that we are always capable of, and there is an importance in that.
As
the title suggests, this is a film that’s partially about go of all that’s
beyond our grasp. Not that it sugarcoats
it, or makes it out to seem easy; it’s hard to let go, especially of something
as wonderfully diverse and majestic as the Earth. Seeing a recent study estimating that up to
half of all bird species in North America would become either extinct or
endangered as a result of severe warning produced something akin to tearing
sensation inside of me. How could I
possibly accept raising my children in a world where they can only experience
half the forest sounds I did growing up?
There
is, perhaps, one possible path to salvation.
One Chinese activist, speaking with Fox atop the Great Wall, speaks of the
“moral imagination-“ the times in history when human thought has taken a leap
beyond its time and produced ideas about what the world should be like,
providing a beacon for people to work towards.
The moral imagination is perhaps the key to realizing our potential to
take advantage of these times and change for the better.
It’s
often been the actions of individuals or small groups that have gotten the ball
rolling, and with modern technology, the individual and the small can be amplified
like never before. The capacity of the
governments and the large to silence dissent weakens with each passing
day. Is the power of the moral
imagination where hope for Earth and civilization is to be found? It HAS happened before, despite all the odds,
and maybe it takes all of us doing very small things for it to happen again.
This
is a powerful piece of documentary filmmaking, and an absolutely necessary part
of the conversation taking place about how to salvage what we can from the
wreckage of human shortsightedness.
Positivity and optimism are key, but we equally need the capacity to
feel, experience, and acknowledge our fears despairs, and worries if we are to
be clear-eyed enough for the challenges facing us.
-Noah Franc
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete