The great lengths that nature photographer James Balog and his team went through to place 43 time-lapse cameras at 18 glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, Canada, and the Rocky Mountains renders absolute proof of global warming a.k.a. climate change.
You can’t help but empathize with the devastating disappointment Balog feels when he comes back to check the cameras after a year has passed, only to discover that the time-lapse function failed on every single camera. Another trip back to the computer drawing board for a better version of the technology they invented solves the issue. A veteran photographer for National Geographic, Balog refuses to let his broken down knees keep him off mountains of ice. The movie is as much a character-study of James Balog as it is about his process and journey to cataloging calving events.
Dubbed the Extreme Ice Survey, Balog’s stated mission is “to show epochal change happening within the time frame of human life, and to provide scientists with a photographic record to understand the mechanics and pace of glacial retreat and how it relates to climate change.”
Director Orlowski keeps a sense of wonder in the face of the gloomy cataclysms the worlds’ glaciers are experiencing. When a pair of Balog’s fearless assistants film calving event in Greenland where a 300-foot-high glacier the size of Manhattan breaks off into the ocean, the effect is mesmerizing.
The photography on display is astonishing. Anyone with the smallest amount of curiosity in the condition of our glaciers, will find “Chasing Ice” more than a little informative.
Rated R. 84 mins.
