MOVIE REVIEW: Chasing Ice

Film: Chasing Ice
Director: Jeff Orlowski

Last week I went to a screening of the environmental documentary, Chasing Ice. I’ve been waiting a bit to write the review because the film held a really heavy impact on me initially, and I wanted to write my thoughts on the feature after taking a step back. Environmental documentaries are really hit or miss with me, mostly because they can be extremely biased, but then again that’s the intent of most hard hitting documentaries are anyway. For something to carry a lot of weight, the subject matter generally is controversial, with two different heavy opinions competing for acceptance. Chasing Ice decides to tell the true story, and does it with emotional gravitas, beauty, and putting into the spotlight the horrific consequences of human action (or rather, inaction).

Chasing Ice tells the story of critically acclaimed photographer James Balog and his quest to document the recession of glaciers over the course of a five-year time span.  While James could have just gone to the glaciers every few months and took a few pictures, he decided to do something of grander scale. James sets out and places tons of different cameras all around some of the world’s biggest ice glaciers, and gets the cameras to take pictures over a frequent fixed time frame over the course of the five years, creating some of the most beautiful time lapses I have ever seen. It is this project with the Extreme Ice Survey that provides the context for the story of global warming and it’s immediate and direct consequences on the environment.

The thing that Chasing Ice executes beautifully is showing, not telling. Documentaries sometimes fall victim to the idea that they have to give tons of backstory and facts to get the point across, but a lot of the time it’s too much and bogs down the overall narrative and message the filmmaker is trying to get across. Chasing Ice takes a different approach and instead uses gorgeous cinematography to paint the picture as to why climate change should be a concern of not just environmentalists, but the general population. You can truly feel the weight of the problem not because you are given numbers and ideas, but rather you are shown directly what is happening. Film is a medium about showing and conveying different ideas, and Chasing Ice does a fantastic job of showing the time-lapses of glaciers melting before your eyes to get you to care. Chasing Ice doesn’t exactly give you an answer to the global warming problem, but instead it gets you to want to know more and figure out what you can do to help the problem. I personally prefer this method of filmmaking, however I can see where different techniques are better for different subject matters. Chasing Ice opts for telling the story of James Balog and his crew so you can see not only the intense lengths they are going to bring global warming to a global stage, and its their tremendous effort and their results that are showcased as a tragic piece of art that describes effects of our actions on the environment.

Is Chasing Ice a documentary worth seeing? Yes. However it’s not just worth seeing on it’s eventual Netflix distribution; it’s worth the time of making your way to the cinema and seeing the film in all of it’s beautiful and large screen glory. The cinematography alone needs to be experienced on the silver screen, and I urge you to not only take your time to see this necessary and potential Oscar-hopeful, but to also start the conversation about climate change.

You can check out the release schedule of Chasing Ice on their website here. Also please make your way over to the Extreme Ice Survey’s website for more information on climate change.

SCORE: 9/10
Written By: Tyler Osborne

 

Tyler Osborne
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