In the years since
"An Inconvenient Truth" came out, it seems like low-budget independently produced documentaries on global warming are a dime a dozen. I should know. I've been watching a lot of them. One of my most recent viewings was a two-hour, poorly produced, poorly researched debacle called "What a Way to Go" that all but turned me off of the $2 Films for Action screenings at Liberty Hall here in Lawrence.
That being said, I was wary when I got
"Out of Balance" in the mail. And although I think Tom Jackson's expose doc on the effects of Exxon Mobil and global warming lacks, ironically enough, a balance of opinion, it's clear that Jackson has done his homework. The people he interviews are actual experts, people who have spent time studying global warming, not just someone with an opinion who's written a self-published book.
In fact,
"Out of Balance" not only brings to mind Al Gore's now famous documentary, but also the documentary
"The Corporation," a film which I think is to corporate America and capitalist economics what "
An Inconvenient Truth" is to global warming. And while one may argue that after these two all-encompassing documentaries, a film can't really come up with any new information, I say that
"Out of Balance" still has a pretty interesting perspective to offer. I discovered things about Exxon Mobil, particularly about the cleanup of the Valdez oil spill and Exxon's influence over Bush's environmental policy that, while not exactly surprising, were pieces of information I had not previously known.
My one beef with the film is, as I said before, its lack of a balance of opinion. It would have been interesting if Jackson had attempted (or shown attempts) to interview members of Exxon, or at the very least someone with a dissenting opinion. Even though films like
"The Corporation" suffer from a similar lack of convincing devil's advocates, at least Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott's film did have people who argued on the side of executives and corporate America. I would be very interested in hearing about global warming from the other side of the corporate office tower.