''Before the Flood'' is a 2016
documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...
about
climate change
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...
directed by
Fisher Stevens
Fisher Stevens (born Steven Fisher; November 27, 1963) is an American actor, director, producer and writer. As an actor, he is best known for his portrayals of Ben in ''Short Circuit'' and '' Short Circuit 2'', Chuck Fishman on the 1990s televi ...
. The film was produced as a collaboration between Stevens,
Leonardo DiCaprio,
James Packer
James Douglas Packer (born 8 September 1967) is an Australian billionaire businessman and investor. Packer is the son of Kerry Packer , a media mogul, and his wife, Roslyn Packer . He is the grandson of Sir Frank Packer. He inherited control ...
,
Brett Ratner
Brett Ratner (born March 28, 1969) is an American film director and producer. He directed the ''Rush Hour'' film series, '' The Family Man'', '' Red Dragon'', '' X-Men: The Last Stand'', and ''Tower Heist''. He is also a producer of several film ...
, Trevor Davidoski, and Jennifer Davisson Killoran.
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of many major accolades, inclu ...
is an executive producer.
The film covers
effects of climate change
The effects of climate change impact the physical environment, ecosystems and human societies. The environmental effects of climate change are broad and far-reaching. They affect the water cycle, oceans, sea and land ice ( glaciers), sea le ...
in various regions of the world, and discusses
climate change denial. Numerous public figures are interviewed in the documentary. To offset the carbon emissions of the production, the filmmakers paid a voluntary
carbon tax
A carbon tax is a tax levied on the carbon emissions required to produce goods and services. Carbon taxes are intended to make visible the "hidden" social costs of carbon emissions, which are otherwise felt only in indirect ways like more sev ...
.
The soundtrack features compositions by
Trent Reznor
Michael Trent Reznor (born May 17, 1965) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and composer. He serves as the lead vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and principal songwriter of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, wh ...
and
Atticus Ross
Atticus Matthew Cowper Ross (born 16 January 1968) is an English musician, record producer, composer, and audio engineer. Along with Trent Reznor, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for '' The Social Network'' in 2010. In 2013, th ...
,
Mogwai
Mogwai () are a Scottish post-rock band, formed in 1995 in Glasgow. The band consists of Stuart Braithwaite (guitar, vocals), Barry Burns (guitar, piano, synthesizer, vocals), Dominic Aitchison (bass guitar), and Martin Bulloch (drums). Mog ...
and
Gustavo Santaolalla
Gustavo Alfredo Santaolalla (born 19 August 1951) is an Argentine musician, composer, and record producer. He is known for composing his film scores with his collaborator and acclaimed director Alejandro González Iñárritu, which composed the ...
.
The film premiered at the
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...
in September 2016, and was released theatrically on October 21, before airing on the
National Geographic Channel on October 30.
As part of National Geographic's commitment to covering climate change, the documentary was made widely available and free of charge on various platforms.
It received generally positive critical reviews.
Background
At the European
premiere in London in October 2016, DiCaprio introduced the film as follows:
Content
![The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch High Resolution](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights_by_Bosch_High_Resolution.jpg)
The film shows DiCaprio visiting various regions of the globe exploring the impact of
global warming
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
. As a narrator, DiCaprio comments these encounters as well as archive footages. DiCaprio repeatedly references a 15th-century
triptych
A triptych ( ; from the Greek adjective ''τρίπτυχον'' "''triptukhon''" ("three-fold"), from ''tri'', i.e., "three" and ''ptysso'', i.e., "to fold" or ''ptyx'', i.e., "fold") is a work of art (usually a panel painting) that is divided ...
by
Hieronymus Bosch
Hieronymus Bosch (, ; born Jheronimus van Aken ; – 9 August 1516) was a Dutch/ Netherlandish painter from Brabant. He is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school. His work, generally oil on o ...
, ''
The Garden of Earthly Delights
''The Garden of Earthly Delights'' is the modern title given to a triptych oil painting on oak panel painted by the Early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch, between 1490 and 1510, when Bosch was between 40 and 60 years old. It has b ...
'', which, he explains, hung above his crib as an infant, and which he uses as an analogy of the present course of the world toward potential ruin as depicted on its final panel. The film also documents, in part, the production of DiCaprio's 2015 film ''
The Revenant''.
DiCaprio's comments and inquiries focus extensively on
climate change denial, mostly among corporate lobbyists and politicians of the United States.
They interview with British-born astronaut
Piers Sellers
Piers John Sellers (11 April 1955 – 23 December 2016) was a British-American meteorologist, NASA astronaut and Director of the Earth Science Division at NASA/GSFC. He was a veteran of three Space Shuttle missions.
Sellers attended Cran ...
, a
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
scientist who flew on three space missions, discusses his desire to publicize the perils of global warming in the short time he expected he had remaining to live, as he had stage IV pancreatic cancer as he was being filmed. He died on December 23, 2016.
Cast
Along with DiCaprio, the documentary's subjects include
Piers Sellers
Piers John Sellers (11 April 1955 – 23 December 2016) was a British-American meteorologist, NASA astronaut and Director of the Earth Science Division at NASA/GSFC. He was a veteran of three Space Shuttle missions.
Sellers attended Cran ...
,
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...
,
Pope Francis
Pope Francis ( la, Franciscus; it, Francesco; es, link=, Francisco; born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 17 December 1936) is the head of the Catholic Church. He has been the bishop of Rome and sovereign of the Vatican City State since 13 March 2013. ...
,
Sunita Narain,
Anote Tong
Anote Tong (; born 11 June 1952 in Tabuaeran, Line Islands) is an I-Kiribati politician for the Pillars of Truth party and environmental activist with half Chinese heritage, who served as President of Kiribati, from 2003 to 2016. He won the elect ...
,
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician and diplomat who currently serves as the first United States special presidential envoy for climate. A member of the Forbes family and the Democratic Party, he ...
,
Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The ...
,
Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu (; American Spanish: ; credited since 2016 as Alejandro G. Iñárritu; born 15 August 1963) is a Mexican filmmaker and screenwriter. He is primarily known for making modern psychological drama films about the hu ...
,
Johan Rockström,
Greg Mankiw
Nicholas Gregory Mankiw (; born February 3, 1958) is an American macroeconomist who is currently the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Mankiw is best known in academia for his work on New Keynesian economics.
Mankiw ...
,
Gidon Eshel, Farwiza Farhan, Ian Singleton, Lindsey Allen,
Jeremy Jackson
Jeremy Dunn Jackson (born October 16, 1980) is an American actor and singer. He is best known for his role as Hobie Buchannon on the television show ''Baywatch''.
Career Television
Jackson appeared in 159 episodes of the TV series ''Baywatch' ...
,
Thomas Remengesau Jr.
Thomas Esang "Tommy" Remengesau Jr. (born 28 February 1956) is a Palauan people, Palauan politician; in 2013 he was elected the ninth president of Palau and was re-elected to that office in 2016. Previously he served as the seventh president of ...
, Alvin Lin,
Ma Jun,
Michael E. Mann,
Philip Levine,
Jason E. Box, Dr.
Enric Sala,
Michael Brune, and
Ban Ki-Moon.
Subjects for the DVD's extra or deleted scenes include:
Mark Z. Jacobson,
Steven Chu, Andrew Baker, Ben Kirtman, and Sala. Topics include education, politics, coral, hurricanes, and urgency.
Broadcast and streaming
The film was made available freely on the internet between October 30 and November 6, 2016, the run up to
US Election Day, having aired on the National Geographic Channel in 171countries and on some countries' national television channels. The film is subtitled in 45languages, making it accessible for non-English audiences. The film had been watched more than 2million times on the day following its release. As of November 2022, it is available for streaming on
Disney+
Disney+ is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned and operated by the Media and Entertainment Distribution division of The Walt Disney Company. The service primarily distributes films and television se ...
.
Carbon tax
The film takes a closer look into the possibility of a
carbon tax
A carbon tax is a tax levied on the carbon emissions required to produce goods and services. Carbon taxes are intended to make visible the "hidden" social costs of carbon emissions, which are otherwise felt only in indirect ways like more sev ...
benefiting the American nation. In addition, they state that, "the carbon emissions from ''Before the Flood'' were offset through a voluntary carbon tax."
Reception
Critical response
The film received mostly positive reviews from critics. On
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, it has a 75% approval rating, based on 32 reviews with an average score of 7.00/10. On
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, it has a score of 63 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "Generally favorable reviews."
''Before the Flood'' was described as "surprisingly moving" in ''
W'' and as "a heartfelt, decent, educational documentary about the most important issue of our time" by ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
''.
''Variety'' praised the fact that "given the sincerity of its message, its ability to assemble such a watchable and comprehensive account gives it an undeniable urgency," stating that "where the film succeeds the most is by focusing on the ground-level victims of climate change, whether the polar bears of the Arctic, or the inhabitants of island nations like
Kiribati
Kiribati (), officially the Republic of Kiribati ( gil, ibaberikiKiribati),[Kiribati]
''The Wor ...
."
Accolades
Soundtrack
The film's soundtrack was written and performed by
Mogwai
Mogwai () are a Scottish post-rock band, formed in 1995 in Glasgow. The band consists of Stuart Braithwaite (guitar, vocals), Barry Burns (guitar, piano, synthesizer, vocals), Dominic Aitchison (bass guitar), and Martin Bulloch (drums). Mog ...
,
Trent Reznor
Michael Trent Reznor (born May 17, 1965) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and composer. He serves as the lead vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and principal songwriter of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, wh ...
,
Atticus Ross
Atticus Matthew Cowper Ross (born 16 January 1968) is an English musician, record producer, composer, and audio engineer. Along with Trent Reznor, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for '' The Social Network'' in 2010. In 2013, th ...
, and
Gustavo Santaolalla
Gustavo Alfredo Santaolalla (born 19 August 1951) is an Argentine musician, composer, and record producer. He is known for composing his film scores with his collaborator and acclaimed director Alejandro González Iñárritu, which composed the ...
.
See Also
*
Don't Look Up
''Don't Look Up'' is a 2021 American apocalyptic political satire black comedy film written, co-produced, and directed by Adam McKay from a story he co-wrote with David Sirota. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan, ...
References
External links
*
Before the Flood on DailymotionNational Geographic's Free to Watch Site hosting 'Before the Flood' until November 7, 2017National Geographic TV Shows, Specials & Documentaries*
*
*
{{Leonardo DiCaprio
Documentary films about global warming
American documentary films
2016 films
2016 documentary films
2016 in the environment
Films directed by Fisher Stevens
Films produced by Leonardo DiCaprio
Films scored by Mogwai
Films scored by Trent Reznor
Films scored by Atticus Ross
Films scored by Gustavo Santaolalla
National Geographic (American TV channel) original programming
Television Academy Honors winners
2010s English-language films
2010s American films