akrish

I don’t watch that many movies, but this weekend my parents and I went to watch Disney’s (actually Disneynature’s) Earth. All three of us really enjoyed the movie so here I am writing a short review.

First of all, you should watch the trailer, you get a feeling for the ridiculous footage that the directors managed to take.  The movie is basically a documentary about the Earth (duh) and a lot of the creatures that coexist with us. The “story” focuses on three families (polar bears, whales, elephants), but also spends some time on tons of other animals: monkeys, birds of paradise, wolves, penguins, you name it.

Naturally, the theme of how humans are making it difficult for animals to survive is present, but it’s quite subtle. The movie wasn’t designed to reprimand humans (like I believe An Inconvenient Truth was); instead it showed specific examples of how global warming was making it difficult for animals to survive. The narrator would say things like “as our world warms, it’s becoming harder for …,” without directly blaming humans (though we all know who’s fault it is). I really liked how they didn’t get distracted with this theme, as I could vision the movie being completely different if they had emphasized this point further. Not that I don’t think the whole environmentalism issue isn’t important, I think that the movie still made it’s point without becoming too intrusive and forceful.

I was also really impressed with the footage the directors captured. Even in the trailer, there are some amazing shots. I can’t say much about this without giving away anything really cool about the movie, but they use some pretty cool techniques. Most noticeable (and cool) is the time-lapse photography that they use to show change. They use it tastefully to show growth of organisms, seasons changing, etc. Then, there is a lot of aerial footage, in places like the Arctic Circle, Niagara Falls, the African Savannah, and the Rain Forest. A lot of this footage is also really cool (though some of it seems like pretty standard stuff).

The crazy thing is how they managed to get so much footage of animals. For one of the first scenes, the crew waited with cameras trained for two weeks to film polar bears emerging from their winter den after winter. There’s tons of this stuff and I haven’t really seen that much of it (though I confess I’m not much of a nature buff).

What really caught my attention was the soundtrack. It’s not often that I notice the soundtrack of a movie, but there were several times that I found myself thinking “this music is really fitting and also standalone awesome.” The soundtrack was recorded by the Berlin Philharmonic, and they’re an internationally known orchestra. I’m really excited for the soundtrack to come out so I can listen to it while studying.

Overall, I definitely recommend Disneynature’s Earth. Again, I don’t watch a lot of nature documentaries, but I really liked this one. I don’t think it’ll win many awards, but it’s a good movie. Also, you should watch it in theaters to really appreciate the cinematography.