THE STORY – In 1980 Florida, twenty experts gather at a beachside resort for a weekend conference on a global issue that is starting to gain traction: The effects of CO2 emissions on the climate. The scientists, activists, and policymakers have one simple mandate from Congress — write a statement about what to do to get control of the problem. Easier said than done.
THE CAST – Paul Rudd, Evan Peters, Paul Giamatti, John Turturro, Jason Clarke, Tatiana Maslany, Amy Ryan, Dylan Baker, Noah Robbins, Zach Woods & Nina Arianda
THE TEAM – Tom McCarthy (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 111 Minutes
Our planet is dying. It is slowly getting hotter, causing massive shifts in weather patterns and climate ecosystems, which in turn causes changes to how we live. While Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius first made the connection between burning fossil fuels and Earth’s rising temperature in 1896, no one (at least in the United States) did anything about it until 1980, when the US government brought together a group of environmental activists, scientists, lawyers, and lawmakers to solve the problem found in a study that showed the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions on the environment. The group, moderated by Tom Jorling (Paul Rudd), convened for four days at a hotel in St. Petersburg, FL. For four days, they debated, negotiated, and wrote to figure out how to solve humanity’s most pressing issue. But first, Tom has to figure out how to arrange the chairs. No pressure.
Tom McCarthy’s “A Statement” uses conference transcripts to show how we arrived at our current climate crisis. In fact, all the dialogue during the conference comes directly from the transcripts, overlaid onscreen in the opening minutes to prove the film’s fidelity. Those transcripts are compelling enough on their own, but McCarthy smartly invents scenes outside the conference room that further clarify who prepared this statement and why writing it was such an arduous process. Treating the people involved as fully rounded humans, McCarthy takes them to task while acknowledging that the system that impaneled them essentially set them up to fail. This makes for a remarkably clear-sighted film, albeit a mightily depressing one, but it’s nowhere near as dry as that sounds. “A Statement” is a sobering look at our failed history in trying to combat climate change and protect the environment, but it’s also massively entertaining thanks to lively pacing, snappy dialogue, and a tight ensemble cast who bring deeply human life to the proceedings.
Much like some of the conference attendees, McCarthy knows how dry these sorts of conferences can be, and illustrates that right off the bat: After each of the twenty participants introduce themselves (don’t worry; McCarthy does yeoman’s work wrangling the cast so that only a few names and specialties need to stick in your head), it doesn’t take long for Dr. David Rose (John Turturro) to present a series of six slides that detail the possible impacts of varying levels of CO2 emissions on the environment over time. We experience this highly technical deep dive through the perspective of Annemarie Crocetti (Amy Ryan) of the National Commission on Air Quality, a nonscientist who understands less and less as Rose drones on and on. After that, though, such discussions are kept to a minimum, with terminology all audience members can understand, even if the speed of the dialogue can hinder full understanding of the more complex ideas at play. Thankfully, McCarthy and his stellar cast give the most impactful ideas room to breathe, letting the audience catch up and appreciate the gravity of the moment.
The esteemed ensemble makes it look easy to build full characters from nothing but dry, technical, high-minded expressions of knowledge. Recognizable faces like Dylan Baker, Bryan Batt, Jason Clark, Paul Giamatti, Tatiana Maslany, Zak Orth, Evan Peters, Noah Robbins, and Zach Woods play both to and against type, building personalities and relationships out of next to nothing. With only the historical record of what was said aloud to go off of, the cast members put in tremendous effort to imagine how these people would have actually interacted: who they shared silent glances with, why they would remain silent instead of speaking, and how and when they would assert themselves. Between the sheer amount of dialogue and the setting’s presentational nature, the actors are essentially performing a play, and their commitment to staying in the moment keeps the audience fully immersed in their dilemmas, no matter how seemingly insignificant or unsolvably large they may be. Since he has the most audience-pleasing lines, Turturro is the easy standout, his stiff, almost disinterested bearing slowly giving way to passionate emotion that requires all his strength to keep inside. Peters, as environmental activist Rafe Pomerance, is fun as Turturro’s opposite: No matter how hard he tries, he cannot contain his frustration with his colleagues’ inability to get anything done. Ryan gets the film’s big emotional moment, one that hits even harder because it’s not invented for the film but taken directly from the transcripts.
Taking most of its dialogue directly from the transcripts ensures that “A Statement” offers the kind of fly-on-the-wall, you-are-there cinematic experience usually found only in vérité-style documentaries. The film’s setting takes place in the kind of rarefied air most of us will never get to breathe, but the characters are still much closer to the working class than the upper classes, no matter how much knowledge they possess. Watching these discussions play out is as heart-rending as any expert melodrama; you can feel good people with their hearts in the right place being torn apart by their own professional standards and an overabundance of caution because of their situation. Although they aren’t primarily political, they must consider the politics of their statement if they want politicians to act. When Annemarie delivers her final statement to the group, she’s saying what everyone in the audience is thinking: If everyone in the room agrees this is a real problem that needs to be dealt with immediately, why don’t they just say so in the draft statement? Yet all her colleagues can do is stare in silence, knowing they have no time left to craft wording that will reach consensus, and that without a statement, they will have failed at their task.
Early in “A Statement”, Jorling explains to young atmospheric science expert Robert Cunningham (Robbins) that the goal of the conference is to achieve consensus, not unanimity. Cunningham doesn’t understand the difference, so Jorling explains: Unanimity means that everyone agrees, while consensus means that no one disagrees. The latter is more achievable, but even that proves nearly impossible with all the competing factors at play, especially the constantly evolving opinion of the scientific community, which does not like to deal in absolutes. The problem with that is that politicians, the ones responsible for pushing through the laws and regulations that will do the work of saving the planet, the ones these scientists and wonks have to convince that action is necessary, need absolutes in order to sell those laws and regulations to their constituents. As a document of how the democratic process breaks down, “A Statement” is an invaluable piece of cinema, one that explains better than any film since “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” the inner workings of government and why it’s so damn difficult to get anything of substance done.
While its message may be a downer, the percussive score and razor-sharp editing keep the pace up, and the dialogue (even some stuff lifted straight from the transcripts) has enough laugh lines to cut through the complex issues at hand. McCarthy gives the audience the same amount of cold, hard facts as any good documentary while keeping the film from feeling like a lecture. It will leave you incensed, and more than a little afraid for the state of our nation, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe we need something to stop us from constantly kicking the can down the road, something that will force us to put our personal peccadilloes aside and come together where our collective future is concerned. “A Statement” very much feels like that something, and not a moment too soon.
