4/5 stars

Can I say global warming is beautiful?  No, it is far too weak a word.  It is sublime.  If you are still riding the righteous wave left by Al Gore’s wake, then this film will serve as a boost to your momentum.  And in many ways, it does more than An Inconvenient Truth ever could.

Chasing Ice is a documentary following National Geographic photographer James Balog in the years he conducts a massive project; time-lapsed footage of glaciers all over the northern hemisphere on a time-scale that is unprecedented.

For your consideration, the film presents Balog’s work in the final portion of the film. This is where you become mesmerized. Ice flows that took thousands of years to make are disappearing from the globe in a matter of months. Leaving your judgments on the reasons for global warming at the door, this is footage that will have you gasping at its grandiosity.

Balog is in the business of letting his data speak for itself.  Whether or not you are ready to join the scientific project of changing the direction of our energy policies may be decided on factors out of this writer’s control.  The media’s death-grip on fabricating a schism in scientific communities and their views on mankind’s contribution to the change of our planet’s temperature is fierce and able. Then there are radical communities on the fringes of society who with the fervency of Benedictine monks are eliminating their need for modern amenities.

If the film serves as an illustration of the magnitude of our misdeeds, it is that an individualistic spirit will not solve a global epidemic, in spite of all our democratic instincts. By the time the credits role, Scarlett Johansson is singing bluesy melodies that could have jeopardized the urgency of the film. Thankfully, that’s impossible.

Lenhardt Stevens