Movie Review: "Chasing Ice"

"Chasing Ice": B+.  If you thought global warming was a myth propagated by environmentalists or a figment of the collective imagination of nature-loving tree huggers, you will probably be convinced otherwise after watching this rather short (71 minutes between opening and closing credits) documentary. The film shows the mission of scientist James Balog and his team to capture visual evidence of the relatively rapidly changing landscape of several huge glaciers in the northern hemisphere. To achieve his objective, Balog set up dozens of cameras in Iceland, Greenland, Alaska, the Canadian Rockies and Glacier National Park in Montana. (The closing credits indicate he has since added Mount Everest to the list.) The cameras were designed to snap a photo of the same target every thirty minutes during daylight hours for months at a time. After some early set backs, the results achieved by Balog's enterprise, under the banner Extreme Ice Survey, are triumphant. What you will see on screen is some of the most spectacular footage of natural phenomena you will ever witness.

Each camera had to be mounted and secured in a location where a clear shot of the targeted glacier was available. The apparatus had to be able to withstand hurricane force winds and temperatures well under forty degrees below zero. To reach the best vantage points, Balog and his small team of fellow scientists risked their lives traipsing over unsteady ice platforms, scaling treacherous crevices, rock climbing and hiking across the frozen tundra. One of their biggest challenges, especially in the early stages of their endeavor, was overcoming the utter disappointment and frustration of dealing with faulty component parts. Any malfunction of even the tiniest component in the guts of a custom made camera resulted in failure. And in Balog's business, any failure was almost catastrophic, because once a glacier melted there was no future opportunity to capture the moment on camera. The glacier was not going to reappear.

The movie has a good mixture of the three main elements of the story: adventure; scientific explanations, complete with easy-to-understand charts and photos, of what we are witnessing; and, a look into the personal life of Balog, who amazingly was doing all of this strenuous work with a chronically "bum" knee. At several points throughout the film, before-and-after pictures of the same landscape are shown on a split screen. Sometimes images of familiar things, such as the Empire State Building or the island of Manhattan, are superimposed to give the viewer a sense of scale. The glaciers are undoubtedly shrinking, and in some cases literally disappearing. One of the many effects of these phenomena is the rising of the water level in our oceans. The masses of melted ice have to go somewhere. When you think of all of the coastal cities throughout the world, their populations are at risk if the warming trend doesn't reverse. One of the (perhaps) less-than-obvious possibilities is that hurricanes will have even more devastating effects on coastal cities than in the past, because there is a lot more water which the winds will blow up from the ocean onto the land.

I was fascinated by the camera work of cinematographer Jeff Orlowski, who filmed Balog and his two on-site teammates as they worked to set up and maintain the mounted cameras. It was evident that Balog and his teammates were flirting with danger, but Orlowski must have been risking his life too. One memorable sequence shows Balog and his cohorts clinging to safety ropes as they made their way down a crevice so deep that the bottom could not be seen. Yet, the cinematographer was several feet below those men! Are you kidding me?

Other than citing a noticeable spike in carbon dioxide emissions, the film does not go into detail about what is causing the sad deterioration of the world's glaciers. What is there about the makeup of carbon dioxide that has this deleterious effect? Since I am not a scientist I would have appreciated a minute of two of explanation, although I am willing to take it on faith that carbon dioxide is anathema to ice. I found it interesting that the filmmaker does not point the finger at any specific villain, either by identifying an industry or a country. Given the short duration of the film (as noted above), there certainly was time to do so. Yet, time is found to show the global warming infidels, such as Sean Hannity, mocking those who are sounding the warning bell.

Chasing Ice is a story that took years in the making, an undertaking that could only have been accomplished with a treasure chest of funding and sponsorship. As a viewer, I would have been curious to know the costs associated with Balog's work. The cost of the cameras alone must have reached the high six figures, if not more. This information is not furnished. I chuckled during the closing credits when the screen proclaimed that the scientists wished to thank their sponsors, without whom their work would not have been possible. I estimate that a list of about forty to fifty sponsors appeared below that statement, but that information stayed on the screen for, maybe, just five seconds. If I ever rewatch the movie on DVD, I guess I will have to freeze frame those closing credits to determine the parties who dug deep to fund the expeditions.