Laura Millan Lombrana
BLOOMBERG – There’s never a bad time to watch a movie focussed on the future of the planet. And as 2022 draws to a close – friends and family gathering together – you may find yourself looking for a film everyone can agree on that isn’t another showing of Elf or Die Hard (yes, it’s a holiday film).
From all-time classics and silly action flicks to serious documentaries and science fiction, you might be surprised by the number of films in which climate change has a major part.
Here’s a list of 13 to consider.
David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet (2020)
In this 2020 documentary, David Attenborough tells audiences how the Earth has changed just during his lifetime. In his more than 90 years on the planet, the British broadcaster and biologist has visited many natural wonders and also witnessed the loss of wildlife firsthand. This movie is good for families, including little children, and provides food for thought and conversation.
Waterworld (1995)
A film about the worst that can happen if the ice caps melt feels uncomfortably on the mark these days. The opening scene with Kevin Costner distilling his own urine for drinking water may make you squeamish, but today you can buy drinks made from recycled sewage. Waterworld is feeling more true to life with each year that passes: There’s seemingly always too much or too little of our most precious resource.
Snowpiercer (2013)
Geoengineering has failed. Earth has entered a catastrophic ice age. The vestiges of the human race circumnavigate the world on a train on infinite loop, and order is maintained by a malevolent Tilda Swinton. Directed by Oscar-winning Bong Joon-ho (Parasite, Okja), Snowpiercer is a dystopian thriller where the class system dictates all, and the omnipresent cold is the least of passengers’ worries.
Chasing Coral (2017)
If you’ve never seen coral reefs or if you love them, or both, this is a must-watch. Seeing corals changed my life, and this movie goes some way to do justice to one of the world’s greatest wonders. It also shows what climate change’s consequences look like in visceral detail. You want to look away, but you can’t.
Interstellar (2014)
The inhabitants of Interstellar’s parched, dusty America might not talk about climate change, but the parallels between their world and ours are uncanny. At the end of the 21st Century, a scientist-turned-farmer sets off on a desperate mission to find a new home for humanity after Earth’s agriculture fails. It’s visually stunning, based on theoretical physics and almost three hours long – the perfect holiday movie.
FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992)
Before there was Avatar, there was FernGully. Loggers and an evil entity that feeds on pollution threaten an Australian rainforest inhabited by fairies. One fairy, Crysta, befriends and accidentally shrinks a logger named Zak who then helps lead the fight against the forces trying to destroy the rainforest.
Soylent Green (1973)
Before the first United Nations (UN) climate science reports (1990), before the United States (US) published its first official estimate of how high the Earth’s temperature might reach (1979), the iconic American actor (and later gun-rights advocate) Charlton Heston starred in Soylent Green. This classic dystopian thriller predicted a future of overpopulation, dead oceans and year-round heat and humidity that makes water, food and shelter all scarce. The year it’s set in? 2022.
Princess Mononoke (1997)
The conflict between commerce and nature is at the heart of this 1997 animated classic. Director Hayao Miyazaki deliberately jumbles traditional questions of good and evil, right and wrong. The artwork is also stunning. It has a few violent moments, which might be too much for some of the younger viewers.
Wall-E (2008)
It’s impossible not to fall in love with the adorable garbage-collecting Pixar robot with a curious personality and a knack for adventure. The movie is set 700 years into the future and all humans have left the planet, now a wasteland covered in litter. Wall-E is the last robot standing, but his lonely life is shaken when a sleek, egg-shaped robot named EVE lands on Earth.
The Nice Guys (2016)
I’m fairly sure this is the only time you’ll see a catalytic converter play a pivotal role in a film. The Nice Guys is ostensibly an action-comedy about the search for a missing girl in 1970s Los Angeles, but really it has no plot without car pollution. Hopefully one day the tailpipes in this film will seem as quaintly archaic as Ryan Gosling’s polyester trousers.
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
End-of-the-world movies are one of my guilty pleasures and this modern classic has it all. Humans messing with the climate, giant waves, tremendous storms, great action scenes, a pack of wolves and Jake Gyllenhaal. You’ve seen it already? Me too, and I’m probably watching it again.
Alcarràs (2022)
The life of a family of peach growers is shaken when the landowner decides to cut the trees, install solar panels and switch to farming clean power. Shot in Catalan and featuring non-professional actors from the Spanish fruit-growing region of Lleida, this year’s winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival is an intimate portrait of a rural way of life that’s disappearing, and of the disruptive side of the clean-energy transition.
The Mist (2007)
This is absolutely not a climate movie. I will not make the case that director Frank Darabont or Stephen King, who wrote the novel, had carbon dioxide in mind when putting together this silly gem of a B-movie in which what looks like, uh, sinister air proves to be ridiculously deadly. But just try to watch the scenes of social turmoil, denial of evidence and failure of collective action in the face of a supernatural disaster without seeing it as a climate-ish metaphor of sorts. Find the more recently released black and white cut.
