The meditative documentary The Magnitude of All Things explores the emotional response to Climate Change. An Inconvenient Truth is now 15 years old and seems almost quaint today; Al Gore was certainly not an alarmist.
We in California, with our catastrophic wildfires, may think that we are Ground Zero for Climate Change ground zero, but for those that live on flat atolls in the ocean or in the formerly frozen ice and tundra, it’s even more of a RIGHT NOW phenomenon. The Magnitude of All Things takes us from the Amazon to Australia to Labrador. We meet folks from the uber earnest child crusader Greta Thulin to an indigenous youth activist in Amazon.
We see bleached coral reefs (who knew we needed to worry about THAT?) and “snowing” wildfire ash. An indigenous poet surveys the less-frozen North and asks if his grandchildren will see what he sees.
With especially beautiful photography, a contemplative pace and New Agey piano music, The Magnitude of All Things reminds us that, while we may be ruining it, we still live on a beautiful planet. Even the fires are beautiful in their terrible way.
How do we face extinction – self-caused extinction? Will the grief overwhelm us? Documentarian Jennifer Abbott’s sister recently died, and Abbott brings us inside her own grieving process as a parallel. One subject suggests, “Make peace with the grief but don’t just give up“.
Are grief and hope exclusive? Or, as Abbott posits, can hope be found within grief?
I screened The Magnitude of All Things at Cinequest, it’s fourth stop on the film festival tour, and the first in the US.