Go with the Flow, by David Bax

On the same night that I attended a screening of Jeff Orlowski’s new documentary Chasing Ice, Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast. Fresh in my mind were numerous tweets from friends and colleagues describing their grim preparations, the building wind and water around them and their fears for how bad it might yet get. So Chasing Ice’s decidedly unsubtle discussions of the perils of climate change found particular fertile purchase in my mind.

Photographer James Balog has an ongoing project in the works. He has very expensive, very complex and very fragile cameras on timers stashed all over the Arctic that he uses to create time-lapsed documents of the erosion of glaciers. Every so often, assuming they haven’t frozen or been blown off their moorings, they click a single image. This has been going on for years. If you think that sounds tedious, then you have no idea how quickly these massive blocks of ice are melting away. Luckily, Chasing Ice is here to educate you.

Therein lies perhaps the film’s greatest strength. Much like Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job did for the 2008 financial collapse, Orlowski’s film boils down climate change to a straightforward and bracingly immediate narrative. It shows and tells you what you need to know with a gripping efficiency.

Balog’s commendable undertaking may be the impetus of the whole film but he is also its greatest weakness. Whether the blame is to be placed on him or on Orlowski is unclear but the documentary threatens at times to become a one-note hagiography of the man. His commitment to braving the elements and soldiering on despite multiple knee surgeries – respectable though it may be – occasionally overtakes the more important thrust of the work.

Fortunately, we’ve got astounding things at which to gaze when the other content becomes unbearable. Orlowski shot the film himself and he is his own greatest asset. The shockingly blue ocean; the blindingly white ice; the sheer expanse of both the landscape and the erosion. Yet the high-definition spectacle somehow manages not to overpower the film’s somber message. Instead, it makes all the more clear and tragic just how much we stand to lose.

Despite its missteps, Chasing Ice pulls off a worthwhile feat. It takes a topic that is either too dry (no pun intended) or too depressing for many to dwell on and keeps you transfixed to enough to not let your anger overcome you. Instead, it focuses that outrage and, hopefully, inspires you to take action.

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