If the low turn out to the screening of Leonardo DiCaprio’s climate change chiller is any indication, people are either A) so well informed on the subject of global warming they have already converted their lives to accommodate the pressing need, B) had better things to do on a Friday evening, C) are over DiCaprio or D) over climate change. Make that, in line with our PM’s current view-point, climate shift. It’s a significant difference, apparently.

DiCaprio spruiked his film at Cannes and was met, largely, with the same wall of indifference encountered at the preview screening here. In part, his hero Al Gore has already assumed the mantle of celebrity campaigner and in truth, does it better. He brings verve to his passion and if ever a subject needed levity to get across the line, this is it. A point DiCaprio squarely misses as an endless array of informed heads connect the dots between unsustainable corporate growth and its murderous impact on a finite world.

Fact and opinion crash across the screen as statistics pile up in that part of the brain that has already forgotten them. Something about accelerating decline and stagnant oceans. Which is not to say The 11^th Hour doesn’t have value or intent – it is unquestionably overloaded with both. But what’s the point in preaching to the converted that has already been done so well? We need a film that shocks the world into action and this is not that film. Yet if it achieves nothing else, The 11^th Hour is an urgent reminder that we’re not killing the planet, we’re  killing ourselves. It’s 11:59:59 people, and the clock is about to tick.

// COLIN FRASER