AIFF documentary and film shed light on hot button issues
If "An Inconvenient Truth" can be considered one bookend, then "Everything's Cool" can definitely stand as the other. This is an important documentary, and, in many ways, a profile in courage.
Through compelling interviews, "Everything's Cool" makes the oft forgotten point that there have been researchers, activists and scientists who have worked for decades to make the world aware of the possible consequences of global warming, with, until now, little effect. For many it felt like a long, Quixotic journey, an uphill charge against ubiquitous windmills, with the message falling on disinterested ears. Or, more malevolently, falling on ears that heard and understood, but out of corporate greed and governmental self-interest, distorted the message in order to cast doubt on its efficacy. The effect has been to keep global warming open to question, thus prolonging the moment when any action might be taken.
We see men such as Rick Piltz who courageously left his job as Senior Associate at the U.S. Climate Change Science Center when he discovered that the Bush administration was redacting scientific papers to conform with the administrations wish to make what was unequivocal equivocal. Meanwhile, the planet has continues to grow hotter.
"Everything's Cool" also poses a question — actually its a question voiced by Ross Gelbspan, an East Coast journalist, who has written about the environment for decades — if, in light of all that is now known about the climatological trajectory of our planet, one that cannot be reversed no matter what policies are put in place, what is the moral and right thing to do? It is a fascinating existential question: do nothing, for there is precious little to be done? Or carry on, work for change, and hope that the planet inherited by our children, though dramatically altered, will still be habitable.
"Steel Toes" is remarkable. It stars Academy Award nominated David Strathairn and Andrew Walker who deliver tour de force performances.
Strathairn portrays Danny Dunkleman, a Jewish legal aid attorney who is sent to defend Neo-Nazi Mike Downey, on trial for kicking a Pakistani cook to death in an alley (hence the title "Steel Toes"). Their forced relationship is revealing, and offers both actors, who are each gifted, an opportunity to explore the shreds of common ground they must erect as they craft Downey's defense.
The film is a powerful and insightful character study of two distinctly different men, brought into relief as they sit across a narrow table in prison, each exploring and reacting to the deep fissures of racism and religious intolerance that still exist in society. What is more elusive is the source of the lethal rage that so dominates Downey personality. He has a backstory, we assume, but the evolution from youngster to skinhead is all but inexplicable.
