Film Review: Earth (2009)

The “Nature Documentary” is a surprisingly divisive cinematic genre. For many, light family-friendly romps like March of the Penguins embody the nature documentary. For others, those films lack the political expediency and rigor of films like Godfrey Reggio’s midnight-mainstay, elapsed photography epic Koyaanisqatsi. And for the others, any nature documentary NOT involving a shark is not a nature documentary at all.

Measuring Earth against these three different Nature Documentary types— the light-hearted, the artful and politically heavy and the shocking—it somehow manages to find a unique balance between all of them. It might lack a musical score by Philip Glass, but it does have a solid narration from one of the most gravitas-tic voice actors in the business, James Earl Jones, who replaces the narrator of the 2007 UK release of the same name, Patrick Stewart.

The film earns some points for avoiding a pan-anthropomorphization of all the documented animals, which includes a few of species that are less merchandisable than, say, penguins. The film is largely a seamless compilation of footage taken from its awe-inspiring series Planet Earth, but with a broadened focus that helps enforce its global message. The film conveys some fairly grim messages about the climate changes that threaten animals of all species, class, phylum and kingdom while still managing to capture the raw beauty and majesty of the animals themselves. The stunning film quality probably didn’t hurt.

All in all, Earth manages to convey a very important message about the rapidly changing climate, its disastrous effects on animals and the breadth of its impact without becoming preachy or sensationalist, which is often how environmentalist messages have been received.

Though Earth Day and various Green initiatives come and go each year, hopefully Earth’s audiences will take something a little more enduring than a stuffed animal.

For more info, see the movie review site. For more tech and entertainment news, stick with the blog:

Sony Preps Bigger OLED Screen, Samsung Takes OLED Smaller

Resilient RadioShack Expands Trade-In Program

Google Greens Up Your Home with Power Meter