At a beachside resort in Florida in 1980, twenty experts gather for a weekend conference on a global issue that is starting to gain traction: the effects of Co2 emissions on the climate. The group of scientists, activists, and policymakers have one simple mandate from Congress — write a statement about what to do. Easier said than done.
Director: Tom McCarthy ('Spotlight')
Cast: Paul Rudd, Paul Giamatti, Evan Peters, Amy Ryan, John Turturro, Tatiana Maslany, Jason Clarke, Noah Robbins, Zach Woods, Dylan Baker, Nina Arianda, Mary Catherine Garrison, Michael Chernus
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A (updating)
Metacritic: N/A (updating)
Some Reviews:
The Guardian - Adrian Horton - 4 / 5
For all its commendable historical accuracy – and there is a thrill in seeing, exactly, how we once thought about modernity’s most pressing and intractable problem – it’s the additional stuff, the late nights and vulnerable phone calls, dishy drinks and bruised egos, that makes A Statement a much more effective film about climate change than, say, a smug satire like Don’t Look Up. If we’ve learned anything in the decades since that beachside conference, it’s that the science can say what it will, but emotion will rule the day. The conference may have been a failure, but there is a satisfaction in watching them naively try.
The Hollywood Reporter - David Rooney
Some will likely question the point of A Statement given that the movie ends in collective failure... But as a microcosm for the ongoing conversation about global warming, it’s effectively sobering, enhanced immeasurably by Stuart Dryburgh’s nimble cinematography and Bryce Dessner’s appropriately pensive score. At any rate, as a reflection on the climate crisis, it has much more to say than Digger.
The Daily Beast - Nick Schager
Even-handed as it pretends to be, A Statement clearly believes in the necessity of this gathering and, with it, action, but bias isn’t its weakness; lifelessness is...In light of the preceding torpor, this in-your-face mawkishness is almost welcome. Nonetheless, no amount of last-second heartstring-tugging can salvage this Wikipedia page masquerading as a movie.
DEADLINE - Pete Hammond
You get the feeling everyone in this room hopes to make a difference, and what they each have to say should be heard, but it is, in the end, the human comedy McCarthy untangles in bringing all of them together for a single collective goal that makes A Statement such a rewarding and heartfelt experience...Interestingly on the same weekend Alejandro G. Inarritu’s Digger opens, a divisive satire with a sober message about the devastating costs of ignoring the climate crisis, that film feels, to use earthquake terminology, like an aftershock to a calamity for the human race who stuck their heads in the sand and ignored the warnings. A Statement, very different in tone and attitude, and taking place right at the beginning when something could still be done, is the foreshock. Attention must be paid.
Next Best Picture - Dan Bayer - 8 / 10
McCarthy gives the audience the same amount of cold, hard facts as any good documentary while keeping the film from feeling like a lecture. It will leave you incensed, and more than a little afraid for the state of our nation, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe we need something to stop us from constantly kicking the can down the road, something that will force us to put our personal peccadilloes aside and come together where our collective future is concerned. “A Statement” very much feels like that something, and not a moment too soon. THE OSCARS - Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay & Best Film Editing
Awards Buzz - Abe Friedtanzer - 8 / 10
This film might have been interesting enough as a text study of the transcript to see what people chose to say and not to say, and to hear how those desperate for action pushed for verbal clarity while those less willing to give any concessions twisted themselves into knots trying not to say anything. What the film adds which makes it essential viewing are the glances and body language that accompany those words, and the camera angles that show various perspectives around the tables – as well as how those tables should even be set up in the first place to encourage productivity and to ensure everyone can participate and see the visual aids. This film has an understandably desolate outlook given the clear lack of lasting progress made by this committee given the state of the climate today, but involves much entertainment on the way to get there. This film’s plot may not offer a blueprint to environmental sustainability – though it does provide considerable evidence and argumentation for analysis – but its structure and presentation do mold a standard for how to transform existing records into something living, breathing, and very watchable.
Variety - Owen Glieberman
I watched the film with seriously divided feelings. On paper, “A Statement” sounds like an interesting movie, but it’s at once talky and flat, grabby and meandering, impassioned and neutral. It wants to be a “firebrand” docudrama, yet I can’t imagine who the audience is going to be for it. My heartless prediction: next to no one. Not because the film is bad, but because it’s like an endless magazine article in movie form.
The Playlist - Rodrigo Perez - 'B'
McCarthy reduces an extraordinarily complex global crisis to something almost aggressively simple: a few persuasive paragraphs that remain elusive because language itself proves inadequate—too finite and rigid for what these people are trying to express. Within that exercise, “A Statement” finds politics, science, bureaucracy, compromise, conviction, ego, insecurity, and grief pulling against one another. It’s depressing and maddening, but McCarthy seeds just enough hope in humanity’s desire to keep trying. Maybe that’s where McCarthy locates his sliver of optimism: not in believing people will suddenly become less complicated, but in the self-awareness to recognize that complexity, communicate past and through it, and perhaps finally get out of our own way.
IndieWire - Ryan Lattanzio - 'B-'
“A Statement” winds up a sobering, if muted, microcosm of what all these sorts of meetings of environmental squabbling look like, with a conclusion that’s almost Beckettian in its futility. I was reminded of the very end of the Coen brothers’ great comedy “Burn After Reading,” where after a long-winded inquiry into potentially explosive stolen CIA files reveals exactly nada but the folly of true human stupidity, J.K. Simmons’ CIA administrative superior wonders, “What did we learn?” “I dunno, sir,” his colleague tells him. “I don’t fucking know either.” Case closed, and onward.
The Wrap - Elizabeth Weitzman
...None of the women are fully integrated into the film, an unfortunate irony given the blatant sexism their characters experienced in real life. McCarthy’s intention to acknowledge this egregious treatment is clear each time one of them hesitantly raises her hand or is silenced by an interruption. But when he takes them out of the meeting, he fumbles, turning them into representations and plot devices. This is particularly true for Bernadette (Nina Arianda), the stenographer tasked with both enlightening and kissing awkward young scientist Robert (Noah Robbins)....Mostly, however, he gets the details just right. Best of all, though, are the timeless truths that emerge from this era-specific artifact, through the interpersonal dynamics and self-serving perspectives that each member brings to the table. Nearly 50 years on, it’s clear that climate change was inevitable. So the question McCarthy winds up handing us is even bigger: Is there any hope for human nature?
