The 11th Hour: Leonardo DiCaprio Explores an Environment in Crises
Feature-Length Documentary Urges Everyone to Get Concerned and Active
Let’s take a quick break from the world of television for a brief piece on the film industry. Following closely on the heels of former U.S. vice president Al Gore and the Oscar-winning 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Hollywood film star Leonardo DiCaprio opened his own environmental documentary The 11th Hour last Friday.
The limited-release premiere in New York and Los Angeles preceded the film’s nationwide release scheduled for this Friday, August 24. When I was contacted about the film, I wasn’t very familiar with it because I rarely pay close attention to celebrities and their too-often vain, irrelevant side projects in between gigs. In this case, however, basic research revealed that something legitimate is underway, and DiCaprio isn’t just dawdling while waiting for his next Oscar-worthy flick to saunter along and arrive at his feet.
The premise of The 11th Hour, which DiCaprio narrates both on- and offscreen, is simple and credible. As New York Times movie critic Manohla Dargis notes in an August 17 review titled “Helpful Hints for Saving the Planet,” the documentary “attempts to stave off helplessness, and the nihilism that often follows it, mostly by appealing to our reason.” In other words, while the issues discussed are both pressing and depressing, The 11th Hour does more than just attempt to guilt-trip audiences with a deluge of dreary statistics and still drearier imagery. Instead, it offers viable solutions that normal people can implement right now to help decrease the threats to our collective environment and restore the robustness of our ecosystems.
It’s nice to know that a celebrity of DiCaprio’s magnitude is concerned about what’s happening in the larger world, and the 11th Hour project may be one situation where his phenomenal fan appeal works decidedly in favor of an excellent cause: Perhaps those admirers who don’t give a hoot about the environment and related matters will still check out the film—because “OMG! It’s Leo!!! Aaah!!!”—and learn something unexpected in the process.
The 11th Hour was cowritten and directed by sisters Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners, and cowritten and narrated by DiCaprio. To learn more about the documentary and the social movement it hopes to inspire, visit the 11th Hour Action Community.
You can also watch a trailer for The 11th Hour below, or jump to the video if you can’t see the player.*
*This video does not include closed captions or subtitles for the deaf, hard of hearing, or non-fluent in English.
The 11th Hour photo and video courtesy of Warner Bros.
