Tom McCarthy’s career post-winning Best Picture for Spotlight in 2016 has been curious, to say the least. He is credited with writing Christopher Robin (2018) and directing and co-writing Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made (2020) and Stillwater (2021), the former of which was straight to Disney+ just a couple of weeks after its Sundance premiere. This isn’t exactly the path I would have been taking after directing a Best Picture winner and taking home Best Original Screenplay for my work, but here we are. After more than a decade, McCarthy is returning to the genre that won him and his crew so many awards with A Statement – a movie featuring people talking in rooms. 

A Statement is adapted from Nathaniel Rich’s book “Losing Earth: A Recent History,” particularly the portion of the book that documents a conference held over October 30-31, 1980, that saw several scientists, environmentalists, and other interested parties descend on St. Petersburg, Florida, to attempt to draft a statement for Congress on the effects of carbon dioxide emissions and the topic of climate change. The film features an all-star cast, including Paul Rudd, Paul Giamatti, John Turturro, Tatiana Maslany, Jason Clarke, Amy Ryan, Zach Woods, and Evan Peters. 

I love movies like this because each character gets their moment in the spotlight, almost like a play. Hearing McCarthy talk about the filmmaking process during a Q&A at the 64th New York Film Festival, it’s clear this felt more like a play than a typical film shoot. They filmed takes of up to six pages at once, letting each performer find a rhythm and develop natural reactions the camera could pick up as it moved around the room. Even more, every scene in the conference room, from the first meeting to the last, is word for word from the meeting transcripts. The only fictionalized parts of the movie take place outside the conference room, building on the personal relationships found within the transcript. 

This style of filmmaking is fascinating because it forces the actors to find small ways to make the character their own while still strictly following the words on the page. It’s an innovative approach to fictionalizing real life, rooting the film in real dialogue while finding creative choices to bring it to life. You can feel the cast meshing as a whole as the movie goes on, with little glances and sighs that speak louder than any words could. 

The true standouts are no surprise to anyone who’s been keeping up with movies for the last thirty years: Giamatti as David H. Slade from the Department of Energy and Turturro as David J. Rose, a nuclear engineer from MIT. Both deliver perfect monologues, encapsulating their characters with every movement and inflection. Rose is much more soft-spoken, speaking with a quiet confidence and frankness that silences the room at several points. Slade is more bombastic and inquisitive, and easily has the best character arc in the film. 

All of the actors are great, and what the film is trying to say, both about climate change and the current state of America, is endlessly compelling. Each person comes to that room with their own set of beliefs and agendas, with some being their own conclusions while others are clearly being told what to believe and advocate for in this meeting. With people being pulled in so many directions, it’s hard to reach any sort of compromise on the facts and even specific language used in a potential statement. They can all agree that carbon dioxide emissions are somehow changing the environment, but not to what extent, and not if we should be concerned about it at all. Some think it’s too late to make enough change to stop the damage that’s already been done, while others think it’s just cyclical and will be fine after a few more years. This group of people has been given an impossible task to agree on recommendations to provide Congress on this issue. Total gridlock. 

It’s no different today, with every major decision-maker having some powerful entity or person lining their pockets to do their dirty work for them, whether that be in voting for or against legislation or running organizations towards a goal that they know will harm the world at large. I found each character to be cogent, regardless of my own feelings on the issue. It’s also fascinating to look back at 1980 and see that climate change was discussed pretty seriously, as I had always thought it was a more modern ideology. Not only was it a concern, but there was damning research to back up the concern. Yet, here we are, having not done a lot to help fight it. 

A Statement is certainly no Spotlight, but it’s safe to say Tom McCarthy has returned to form with a captivating drama taken right from the pages of a transcript that feels so alive and lived in. He fleshes out each character equally and brings them together as a cohesive unit rather than minor characters in one of the others’ stories. In A Statement, the issue of climate change is the story, and we’re all just trying to wrap our heads around what that means for our little corner of the world. 

Review Courtesy of Cameron K. Ritter

Feature Image Courtesy of NYFF