CHASING ICE
Directed by Jeff Orlowski
Commencing with footage of Hurricane Irene lashing Americas Eastern Seaboard, Chasing Ice informs us that 2011 was the most expensive year in history for weather-related damage. Given the deluge of harrowing Hurricane Sandy images weve weathered of late, its apparent to most of us that climate change shows no signs of abating. Consequently, Jeff Orlowskis environmental documentary seems destined to preach to the converted. Fortunately, it manages to uncover some engaging new material for its well-practised sermon.
Certainly intriguing is the fact that the films subject nature photographer James Balog is a former skeptic who once believed that human behaviour couldnt possibly best the Earth. However, as an artist whod found his muse in massive expanses of ice, he eventually couldnt deny the glacial recession he was witnessing on a yearly basis. In turn, he realized that such erosion offered other skeptics precisely what they required: a visual representation of climate change.
Filmed over several years, Orlowskis debut feature captures Balogs mounting obsession with securing his desired evidence. Using cameras to capture time-lapse images of the ecological destruction underway in the arctic, Balog is reduced to tears by equipment failures and left hobbling about on crutches.
Balogs climactic unveiling of his photographic study is made all the more devastating by his decision to illustrate the immensity of glaciers by equating them to New York City. The analogy he uses the collapse of a particular glacier is akin to Lower Manhattan crumbling is intended to be practically inconceivable. However, in the wake of recent events, such a scenario seems all too possible, and thus all the more disturbing.
