The Oscar Nominated Chasing Ice concerns itself with the story of James Balog, a former Geomorphology student turned photographer, who’s work has revolutionised environmental photography since the 1980’s. Formerly concentrating on wildlife photos, Balog’s attention turned to the natural yet other-worldly beauty of the Earth’s ice glaciers – gargantuan ice fields who’s size often defies logic.
As anyone sensible now knows, humankind’s greedy consumption of fossil fuels is effectively killing these icy monoliths – and ‘killing’ is Balog’s own description. Over the course of this documentary we see his emotional reaction to the destruction of nature – and his project, known as the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) shows us exactly why he feels this way.
The doc’s narrative is simple – we follow Balog’s team and their efforts to set up dozens of timelapse cameras around the globe near glaciers in order to catch stark, visual evidence of the effects of climate change. There’s the expected trials and tribulations – camera malfunction, faulty helicopters and Balog’s growing knee injury as he hikes through icy deserts, but what’s most important here isn’t the journey, but the findings the team make.
Presented with expert talking heads and simple graphics, Chasing Ice shows the irreversible damage being wrought on our environment – miles and miles of ice simply melting into the sea frighteningly quickly. Some of the most viscerally terrifying footage shows the ‘calving’ – the sheering off of the edge of a glacier – of a section of ice roughly the size of the tip of Manhattan (and twice as high). 600ft shards of ice crash into the ocean and flip almost 180º in what seems like slow motion.
The scenery is breathtaking, and Balog’s expertly framed images create stunning vistas of some of nature’s most impressive architecture. Although Chasing Ice presents the facts simply and calmly, it’s images are almost overpowering. Crucially, the film reflects the real gravity of the situation, and the emotional core is James Balog -when we see him candidly struggle to hold back tears while discussing his work, we’re feeling with him.
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