‘The Lake’ Review: Climate Change Doc From Leonardo DiCaprio, Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi Raises Alarms About the Fate of the Great Salt Lake

After seeing Abby Ellis’ urgent Sundance documentary “The Lake,” on the imminent collapse of Utah’s Great Salt Lake due to water overconsumption and rising temperatures, strolling around Park City, Utah, feels inevitably upsetting.

This January might be an anomaly, but the town’s warmer-than-usual temperatures, combined with grand vistas of mostly snowless hills (which would normally be under a thick white blanket during the Sundance Film Festival), look distressing upon in the context of the climate-change alarm bells Ellis rings throughout her environmental call to action about her home state. As if the drought weren’t concerning enough, our anxieties are compounded by legislators’ inability to address the threat the vanishing lake poses or to provide the immediate attention the issue demands.

Thankfully, there are tireless scientists and some lawmakers fighting an uphill battle every day to save Utah’s Great Salt Lake, the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere. Ellis’ documentary profiles three of them, following their joint work in a vérité style. One is Bonnie Baxter, a biology scientist we meet as she remembers her childhood around the lake during a plane ride over it. It’s an eye-opening journey that puts the emergency of present-day low water levels on display. Then there is the Great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed, appointed to his newly created post by Governor Spencer Cox in 2023 as a political and scientific insider to oversee the efforts. And finally, there is Ben Abbott, a global ecologist whose science and everyday life make up the majority of “The Lake.”

All three characters bring a different quality and temperament to the economically assembled film (co-edited by Ellis and Emelie Mahdavian of “Bitterbrush”), balancing one another’s dispositions. Baxter’s soft-spoken but unimpeachable authority finds its perfect match in Abbott’s outwardly passionate charisma. Meanwhile, Steed brings a savvy adaptability to the table, despite the fact that his role as a bridge between politics and science sometimes seems at odds with the results the three try to achieve in unison.

One of the most noteworthy aspects of the trio is Abbott’s identity as a Mormon. As devoted to science and religion as he is to his loving family with young, adorable kids, Abbott doesn’t view prayer and scientific facts as mutually exclusive parts of his life, a quality that Ellis soundly portrays. Presenting Abbott as a man of both faith and science sets a refreshing tone, welcoming everyone into the climate change battle and scientific discourse. Elsewhere, Ellis’ care not to mention of divisive political parties achieves a similar inclusivity: The environment is and should be a bipartisan concern.

Perhaps the grimmest fact “The Lake” spells out (and this is mentioned more than once) is the lack of any success stories from around the world for similarly scaled wetland disasters. In other words, scientists don’t have a case study to look up to or be inspired by in their quest to reverse the Great Salt Lake’s demise. And that slow death goes like this: With more of the water evaporating from the lake, more toxins that exist on the dry waterbeds get released into the air through worsening dust storms. Consequently, vast communities settled around the lake experience increased rates of cancer, reproductive health issues, respiratory problems and more. Even Baxter faces declining health during the making of the film, a devastating outcome for a selfless public interest fighter. Similarly, people who have lived around the lake for their entire lives now have to make an impossible decision: relocate for the future and health of their kids, or wait it out?

Except, sticking around doesn’t seem like a feasible option when Abbott, Baxter and Steed present a report that predicts the total collapse of the Great Salt Lake in five years. It’s infuriating to see how, after Utah sees historic rainfalls in late 2025, their report is met with skepticism. Their analytical explanations that the rainfall is an anomaly and doesn’t eradicate the long-term problem mostly fall on deaf ears. Similarly, their budgetary asks for necessary structures (like dust monitors to keep the communities safe) are only afforded the bare minimum amount. Along the way, the practical trio try to go a different route, diverting everyone’s attention to the endangered species of the region, like Wilson’s phalarope whose survival depends on the Great Salt Lake’s permanence. But even that winnable leverage doesn’t get them far enough.

Rest assured, there are some significant gains and victories in the end, like the money they eventually procure for sufficient dust monitors, along with sizable efforts to improve water flows and protect wetlands. Still, “The Lake” doesn’t end on an unrealistically uplifting note. (In fact, watching the lawmakers’ and federal government’s overarching apathy recalls Adam McKay’s cautionary political comedy “Don’t Look Up,” in which people refuse to acknowledge a comet that is about to destroy the planet.) “The Lake” instead leaves the aftertaste of a truthful note of caution, reminding audiences that when it comes to environmental battles, winning slowly is the same as losing. Science, in this case, requires us to sprint first and do the marathon later, not the other way around. On these grounds alone, “The Lake” is so much more than a regionally isolated issue documentary. Its lessons should apply to every single environmental fight around the world.