The 11th Hour

The 11th Hour

The documentary, The 11th Hour, directed by Leila Conner Peterson and Nadia Conners and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, was released in 2007. The title of the documentary forecasts what’s going to be discussed throughout the length of the film. The human race is in jeopardy due to the fact that we are destroying the planet’s life systems with our pollution and extracting of natural resources. However, the film ends with a sense of hope and that change is possible during the very last moment. The filmmakers are trying to give a sense of urgency to the general audience and create this sense of social responsibility each individual has on our planet. In order to do this the documentary relies heavily on using both ethos and pathos

Along with the scenes, dramatic music plays with a drum beat getting louder and louder. Then the film opens up with a quote saying “Our biosphere is sick. We have a planet that’s behaving like an effected organism.” The consistent quick images of total destruction leave the audience with a feeling of impending doom and the end of the world. Our society usually lives in a bubble completely forgetting what’s happening around us. We have become “anesthetized by our own wealth” and forget what the rest of the world looks like. With this opening scene we begin to realize the truth about the destruction happening around in our

While each speaker argues, presents data, and criticizes our actions we see snippet after snippet of images as each speaker narrates their part. It becomes a collage that allows us to visually see what each speaker is describing and saying. The images are horrifying and not aestheticized until the very end. For example, Stephan Hawking paints a picture of how the futuristic earth would resemble Venus, with extremely high temperatures and with sulfuric rain. While Hawking describes this scene we are shown images of Venus. Also, while Thom Hartman, author of The Last Hour of Ancient Sunlight, stated how “our culture is built on the assumption that we are the superior life form on earth, we are separate from all other life forms, that we have been given dominion of all other life forms,” we are shown clips of machinery such as a robot on the moon, trains, planes, and a man betting a seal to death with a stick. The reason for showing hundreds of video clips and images is because our brain stores audio differently from visual information. 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text