A Climate Story Confined to One Futile 1980 Meeting
IndieWire's review from the New York Film Festival puts Tom McCarthy's new film in a single room. The Oscar-winning writer-director casts a plushly appointed ensemble as the environmental stewards and scholars who tried to solve the climate crisis, and the film's scope, on this account, is one long-winded, futile meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1980.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Take
Dating it to 1980 does half the work before anyone speaks. The audience arrives knowing the meeting didn't fix the problem, so futility is already in the room.
Pushback
That's also the trap. When the outcome is common knowledge, the film has to earn interest from the people at the table rather than from whether the table succeeds.