Saw the first two episodes of the BBC series Planet Earth, a lush and lavish nature documentary. It's extremely beautiful and heady. It's narrated by the kindly, classy, and slightly kooky voice of David Attenborough. Every so often he'll throw a weird pronunciation at you, just to see if you're paying attention. "Avalanche," for example, is pronounced in a (perhaps more correct?) French manner.
The main point of the series is to entrance and mesmerize and on this count it succeeds admirably. Overwhelming aerial shots pornographically revel in the sweep and majesty of tundra and mountain and veldt. Giant herds of caribou and colossal flocks of birds are used to admirable effect. It's films like this which make me hunger for an HD TV. The images are consistently spectacular and the narration is warm and cozy and just informative enough for me to be able to flatter myself with how very clever I must be, to watch such enriching stuff.
Occupied as the series is with visual splendour, it is not overly careful about intellectual rigour. It falls into a few little problems which are common to a lot of nature shows. If you watch carefully, you'll notice that implied close-ups of predator and prey are actually different animals. Creative editing only makes it seem like a tense chase. There's other visual manipulation on display as well, such as when David tells us that a certain crane must brave fast winds to migrate, juxtaposing this information with a shot of turbulent clouds that are actually sped up. There's also of course the usual personification of the animals. The noble prey is struggling to survive, the non-photogenic predator is opportunistic and "evil." Pretty predators are feeding their cubs. Mothers always care about their babies.
These are of course very minor complaints however and can be levelled at any nature documentary. Yes, the shots and the words are chosen to manipulate your emotions and goose the action, but isn't it better to say "the mountains seethe with smoky rage" than "the mountains express methane?" Anyway, on to the episodes.
Episode 1 - Pole to Pole
We travel latitude by latitude down the earth, from north to south. There's a breathtaking flock of birds very near the beginning which tells us what visual treats we're in for. The northern-most forests were very pretty and if David hadn't pointed out that there were no tracks, I wouldn't have noticed. There's a wonderfully entertaining bunch of shots of birds of paradise putting on courting displays (which, I noticed with amusement, are always shut down by the females.) The elephants' sequence was very touching and nice. (Let this episode review serve as a warning: these reviews will not have much depth. In my defence there are no characters or plot to these shows. It's hard to provide insight into a series of pretty images.)
Episode 2 - Mountains
We tour the earth's mountains. I noticed some awkward narration here. David mentions that the Rockies are shrinking. The implication then is that erosion is acting faster than the mountains are being pushed up by tectonic forces, but he goes on to say that all mountains are being worn away by wind and rain, implying that no, all mountains are shrinking. Later on he says Mt Everest is growing. Nothing incorrect, just a tad confusing I feel. The mountains, oddly, are personified in this episode quite a bit. They "seethe" and "smoulder," they are "battling" the wind and are "inhospitable." Fitting, I suppose, as they are the stars of this episode. A lot of nice background on many famous mountains. We are told if they're growing or shrinking and where they came from. There's also a good helping of the animals which are the show's bread and butter. Mountain cats and monkeys are the stars here. Another mama-bear with cubs. In the polar episode there was a mama-polar-bear. I hope this trend continues with a bear in every episode. Let's keep a look out!
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