Director Oliver Stone, who presented his latest documentary, Nuclear, at the Venice Film Festival, presented reflection on the climate crisis in a tone rarely impressive – optimism.
“[We need to] Get away from that fear mentality,” Stone said at a press conference before his movie’s world premiere. Like everyone else, I saw ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ in 2006, it was scary. I kept reading the news, and it just kept getting worse.”
Films, TV and books [about climate change] All negative.” “And I find that everything about Doomsday is very frustrating.”
The director sought to address the problem by focusing on action, offering scalable and effective solutions. He found it in nuclear power, and in a 2019 book, “A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow,” American University professor Joshua S. Goldstein.
When asked what drew him to the script, Stone was clear. “This book gives hope,” the director explained. “It’s positive and it tells you that we can do something about it; that we are not victims.”
Stone and Goldstein co-wrote the film, which attempts to separate nuclear power from nuclear bombs, clearing up false assumptions about the method while targeting media properties such as the HBO series “Chernobyl.” As Goldstein sees it, this kind of “fear promotion” has led us astray.
“If we stayed on the path of the seventies, [when nuclear production was on the rise] “We’re going to have a carbon-neutral economy now,” Goldstein said. “We will not have this climate crisis.”
Desalination, making jet fuel, and sequestering carbon from the atmosphere all require huge amounts of energy and heat. Nuclear power can do all of these things, so there is potential to transform the economy across the board and really replace fossil fuels.”
At the press conference and in the film they co-written, Stone and Goldstein celebrated energy initiatives in France, Sweden and Canada — and urged increased cooperation with Russia.
Stone even repeated that last point on Friday. “We need to urge [Russia],” he said. “They want to be partners, and they always have. Whatever you think of this war, it is a setback, not only for Europe, but for the world. The best thing that can happen is cooperation.”
And so the director called for rapprochement, given the moments of greater international unity. “The end of the Cold War was a beautiful moment,” Stone said. And the cooperation in space between Russia and the United States has been remarkable. I worked for forty years. So don’t talk to me about the hatred between these countries because that comes and goes and it will go away. If we are smart, we will pool our efforts.”
Stone granted that “Nuclear” had a cleaner, more straightforward style than some of his curvy projects, but that was in service of the topic. “It was very important to make this story clear,” he said. “It’s a very complex topic, and it took me a long time to explain. I’m interested in communicating and simplifying as much as possible. But one day I might come back to do something crazy!”
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