A head scratcher of a movie title, ‘An Inconsistent Truth’ presents itself as a play on words assault against former Vice President Al Gore and his anti-pollution doc, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ – and could likewise be viewed as referring to its own rather dubious claims. Which essentially insist that breathing ailments or terminal diseases that might be putting you under the weather, so to speak, are all the result of natural climate conditions – and have nothing to do with man made environmental tampering.
Directed by first timer Shayne Edwards but really a case of wagging the dog with smug narrator Phil Valentine calling the shots, An Inconsistent Truth is the latest Tea Party production possibly picking up speed in leading to the November presidential election. And that includes Generation Zero, Atlas Shrugged, and the documentary Ayn Rand & The Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged.
A Nashville version of the radio shock jock, Valentine is operating here in quite a consistency-free zone of his own, dispensing with any pesky disclaimers that might cast doubts on his assertions. Valentine does, for instance, mock any suggestion from the start that he’s a movie lobbyist for the oil industry – the biggest anti-regulation and pro-pollution entity around – but fails to make mention of his right wing religious ties, and affiliation with the Tea Party. Which is generously funded by oil and gas empires like Koch Industries, two brothers who cynically exploit the Tea Party Movement’s call for less government taxation – and by extension the demise of regulatory agencies – the better to allow corporation to mind their own big business.
So what exactly is Valentine’s strategy as he sets out to dismiss the entire idea of pollution as a bogus myth? He sprinkles his documentary with claims from a handful of right wing think tank and academic experts, who insist that global warming is nothing more than natural changes in the weather over time. You know, the same institutes and universities whose life blood relies on cash infusion study grants from the energy industries, in order to exist.
Then Valentine turns up with his crew unannounced at various congressional offices. And when they object to the impromptu in-your-face cameras and lack of an appointment, along with a persistent snub from fellow Tennessee native adversary Gore, Valentine proclaims this as proof that they’ve all got something to hide. And that his anti-environmental movement assertions are confirmed.
But all of the above is intended to soft-ball the audience as warmup to his big reveal gotcha finale. Which is that Gore has been an anti-pollution advocate all along simply to make lots of money off it – and may now supposedly be as a result, the richest man in the world. As for all those people who have joined the environmental movement, they’re just mindless dupes.
Or more to the point, ‘Branch Algorians’ stuck in ‘climate denier gulags,’ where they’re ruled by their own emotions and mass hysteria. And manipulated by, well according to Fox News, rather oxymoronic ‘communist corporations.’ Whatever that is. And in an astounding neo-McCarthyite harangue by one talking head, ‘At the end of the Cold War we threw these people out red, and they walk back in the front door green.’ While all the while responsible for keeping taxes high here at home, and personal income abroad in Africa low, by impeding US energy mining across that continent. But hey, Africans in question who were indeed dismally impoverished by foreign exploitation, long before the advent of the environmental movement.
So what is the audience to make of this misleading ‘he said, he said’ carbon conspiracy, rob from the rich propaganda tract theory posing as a documentary – and topped off at the end with a curiously unrelated anti-gay, possible pro-Tea Party recruitment music video? Who knows, but let’s toast to that. Pass the fossil fuel.
Rocky Mountain Pictures
Rated PG
1 [out of 4] stars
