Screening at New York Film Festival: Tom McCarthy’s ‘A Statement’

Funny and terrifying in equal measure, Tom McCarthy’s A Statement is a work of recent history rendered urgently, re-creating a multidisciplinary policy meeting on climate change in October of 1980. Commanding an ensemble of nearly two dozen, the Spotlight director brings his signature, understated verve to yet another vital political moment, at a tipping point for both U.S. and global history: the film is set just days before environmentalist Jimmy Carter would lose the presidency to the deregulationist Ronald Reagan.

Based on the nonfiction book Losing Earth by essayist Nathaniel Rich, A Statement is sketched from factual transcripts, and is set almost entirely in a single conference room over 24 hours. It uses these confines to its advantage in pursuit of riveting entertainment, reverse-engineering a work of compelling characters from the dry meeting minutes it occasionally presents on screen, akin to subtitles. This framing is a Brechtian reminder that what we’re watching is not only based on reality, but skirts closely to real events when its policymakers sit in a square formation and talk in circles about what, if anything, Congress ought to say on the matter of rising carbon dioxide, and the need to curb fossil fuel usage over several decades.

However, the film is also vivid and imaginative during its many asides, moments in which fervent activists and mealy-mouthed politicians alike chat and conspire in the corners of the room, or interact after hours in a lush resort in St. Petersburg, Florida, where a nearby wedding reflects the blissful naïveté of the average person. The movie begins with the meeting’s moderators, the EPA’s Thomas Jorling (Paul Rudd) and scientist Robert Cunningham (Noah Robbins), determining the architecture and formation of the gathering by way of its tables and slide projector, setting the stage for the film itself as they try to manipulate the space to suit agreeable debate. Jorling, personable but firm, may as well be a stand-in for McCarthy: both men attempt to exert control over the meeting and its narrative as it sprints to get away from them, courtesy of some colorful personalities. However, for Jorling, it’s about mitigating conflict. For McCarthy, it’s about excavating drama from beneath the words as transcribed by diligent stenographer Bernadette (Nina Arianda), to whom the camera keeps returning.

Chief among the movie’s idiosyncratic bunch are the environmental activist Rafe Pomerance (Evan Peters), whose knowledge (and foreknowledge) on climate change brushes up against his fiery nature, political cog David Slade (Paul Giamatti), who appears to beat around the bush with regards to how the group’s joint statement may be received internationally, articulate nuclear engineer David J. Rose (John Turturro), whose erudite condescension rubs some the wrong way and public health scholar Annemarie Crocetti (Amy Ryan), the group’s de facto conscience who, appropriately, ends up ignored as a matter of retrograde gender politics. These are just some of the wonderful actors populating the movie’s corners; others include Jason Clarke as a smarmy lobbyist, Tatiana Maslany as a mousy lawyer, Michael Chernus as an opportunistic senator and Zach Woods as an eager, good-natured technical consultant making desperate pleas for cooperation.

The problem facing the group is one of determining the problem in the first place, starting with not just defining climate change, but the nitty-gritties of language, while also recommending what ought to be done to curb harm in the long and short run—all while keeping in mind the country’s vested financial interests. These crisscrossing objectives yield captivating exchanges at every turn, given how McCarthy and his cast round out each real-life character through gestures and glances the story projects upon the straightforward meeting transcripts.

Much like in Spotlight, the unearthing of facts becomes a game of dramaturgy in motion. McCarthy mines the words on the page for hidden objectives and deeper personal and political meaning, resulting in a film of broadly sketched caricatures who beat with familiar human goals. Transcript-based cinema, whether quiet like Peter Hujar’s Day or bombastic like Oppenheimer, rides a fine line between fidelity and imagination, a creative tug-of-war McCarthy imbues into the text itself, as A Statement gradually becomes a film about figuring out what to say, and how best to say it. That the film premiered just days after Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Tom Cruise-starrer Digger is appropriate; where Iñárritu harps on the ineffectiveness of climate cinema, McCarthy retrofocuses on its urgency and necessity, by bringing to light a deeper understanding of the ethical and political deadlocks that kicked the can down the road.

The frictions therein become practically meta-textual. Within the story, picking and choosing what parts of the message to present to the public becomes a battle not just between egos, but between emotion and reason; the creative choices feel like a similar highwire feat. The film was no doubt fully conceived before filming, but it plays out as though it were finding itself in real time. It’s practically an act of discovery, stumbling upon dusty old files it brings to life in stunning, amusing dimensions while detailing both the magnitude of societal hubris, and the bureaucratic blockades to doing anything of note when it comes to making lasting change.

All the while, McCarthy presents the 20 Angry Men (and Women) of it all with a sense of momentum despite the meeting’s physical confines, moving quickly and judiciously between perspectives without ever letting things become visually repetitive. The warmth of the Florida sun, and the resort’s sweltering atmosphere, serve not just as a setting, but as a reminder of things to come, though it’s one of the movie’s more subtle premonitions. As its characters lock horns and occasionally meet in the middle, the movie’s politics knock you over the head with a simple, desperate manifesto that reminds you of the ways in which things have gotten significantly worse in recent years, when it comes to who sits in these rooms today, and whose opinions are granted weight.

McCarthy’s mastery of blocking and movement yields a film of both excitement and creeping dread. He externalizes these things through his committed, sprawling ensemble who all seem to be reading from the same secret book on how best to split the difference between theatrical and cinematic performance, and who bring pulsing, hilarious humanity to a room of rote procedure that proves historically monumental and insignificant in equal measure. It’s a small but vital piece of the puzzle on why the world looks the way it does today, and a reminder of just how long the environmental alarm bells have been ringing.

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