One Tree Hill Watch Online 2011

Humans vs. nature, another fascinating BBC series, March 19, 2011

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Zev Toledano – See all my reviews

  

This review is based on the UK Blu-Ray release and, so far, there seems to be no reason to believe that the US version will be any different.

If you have seen the BBC’s superb previous flagship series ‘Life’, then I can summarize this as being the human version of that series by way of Planet Earth: A collection of exotic and sensational footage of humans, some living in various cities or villages around the world, but most of them at the fringes of civilization, all having to meet nature’s challenges using ingenuity, daring and downright unusual or dangerous solutions. This includes dealings with environmental dangers, human extents to find or hunt for food in the most extreme environments, various extreme forms of human dwellings and adaptations, and the many types of relationships between humans and animals ranging from exploitative, to practical survival tactics or pest-control, the religious, the conservationist, etc. The structure of these 8 episodes is modeled after Planet Earth, with a different terrain per episode: Oceans, deserts, the Arctic, jungles, mountains, grasslands, rivers and cities.

If you have seen some of the regional documentaries by the BBC such as Wild China, Wild Africa, South Pacific, Yellowstone, etc. then you have seen this kind of footage where the local humans and their unique adaptations to their environment are featured along with the indigenous wildlife. Except that this series focuses only on the humans, and manages to find some truly amazing footage, most of it new.

Frankly, I approached this series with skepticism, seeing as the series is about people rather than the relatively more surprising and exotic behaviour of wildlife. I also had a few apprehensions about their approach, and half-expected environmental preaching and a general attitude of ‘pure nature vs. evil humans’. But these concerns were allayed, and within 2 episodes I was hooked. Only the final episode ends on a thoughtful, environmentally-aware note while the rest of the series rejoices in human ingenuity and rich footage of human resourcefulness and unusual adaptations to their environments.

Some examples: Dangerous digging of a network of underground aqueducts in the Algerian deserts, building 35-meter-high tree-houses in the jungle with nothing but jungle materials and agile footing, lung-killing sulphur mining in Indonesian volcanos, a shepherd racing against elephants in Mali to reach a water-hole, Mongolian hunting using golden eagles, fishing on the edge of Victoria Falls, using falcons to keep skyscrapers clean, a dangerous long trek over thin ice in the Himalayas by children just to go to school, bedbug infestations in cities, tricky street-gangs of aggressive monkey thieves, stealing food from hungry lions, and much much more.

Which brings me to the violence. This time there is violence between humans and animals, most of it involving hunting. I can see this causing an uproar among animal lovers when this is released. But I think the BBC did a wonderful job of showing what is needed without sugar-coating or censoring reality and practical concerns often denied by animal lovers, and all this without exploiting or being gratuitous either. In addition, many of the hunts are performed by people that rely on it for basic survival, and they often involve dangerous stunts by the desperate hunters.

That said, some scenes are not appropriate for children. The gore of the hunts is often, but not always, minimized or off-camera, and there are scattered scenes such as the ritual drinking of blood from an animal in Africa, and some cataract surgery on mountain people that have gone blind from the sun, that parents would want to censor, not to mention the parental guidance needed on various daring stunts performed by carefree locals.

I found it very entertaining and illuminating to compare this release to some of the Mondos from the 70s, especially the underrated work by Antonio Climati who made a series of shocking, exploitative but justifiably observational documentaries on the relationship of humans with animals. Some scenes from Human Planet would not only fit right in with those works, they even cover some of the same footage and I would not be surprised if they used those documentaries for ideas (e.g. children hunting and eating huge spiders, sky-burials in Tibet, dangerous and bloody whale hunting by men in a small boat, the Matis hunting monkeys in Brazil, etc). Except, of course, the shock is minimized as much as possible rather than exploited, and the narrative is more inspirational rather than sarcastic.

Picture quality: I add this almost as an afterthought because the images are obviously stunning and in high-definition 1080/16:9 and you would expect nothing less from the BBC. Except that, due to the content, don’t expect as many wildlife color postcards that bleed off your screen. In other words, very slightly…

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The Human Planet – The most remarkable species of all., March 5, 2011

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Red on Black (Cardiff) – See all my reviews

  

It was Mark Twain who is usually credited with originating the maxim that “the only two certainties in life are death and taxes” He was wrong since Twain never had the benefit of the wonders of the BBC Natural History Unit. Their certainty appears to be the complete inability to construct a bad series and in achieving the consistant feat of producing the most wonderful and lavish programmes which throughly inform and educate at the same time. This latest series is a variant on a theme since the “Human Planet” looks at us as a species particularly our behaviour in subsistence and fundamentally dangerous environments (with the exception of the last episode “Cities”) where humans are most challenged by nature, eco systems or competition with other mammals and animals.

The Human Planet is a series packed with what television producers describe as the “gawp factor”. It is beautifully filmed and the intriguing “Behind the Lens” segments to every programme show the scale of the logistical challenge for the BBC film crews and the lengths they go to for the perfect shot. The background to the technical filming of the Loatian fisherman Sam Nang in the episode River is as fascinating as Nangs own precarious shuffle on a old blue pair of flip flops across the raging torrent of the Mekong River below suspended on self strung wire. Likewise throughout the warm narration of actor John Hurt is excellent (although the dulcet tones of Sir David Attenborough are missed) while the dramatic music provided by Nitin Sawhney adds considerably to all the drama. But obviously the main stars are the eight programmes human subjects with massive highlights screaming out of every episode. Some of my favourites include the Algerian well diggers, the Inuit fishing for mussels under sea ice as the tide rushes back, the race against the elephants to a desert waterhole by a teenage cow herder Mamadou who battles against a huge bull elephant, the Dogon people of Mali in a huge scrum frantically fishing fish in the sacred water of Lake Antogo, the uneven match of three men against 15 hungry lions, the hugely colourful and often amusing Wodaabe men and their bird like courtship dance and most of all the brilliant episode on the Jungle including the death defying search for honey and the Papuan Korowai tribes massive feat of tree house building.

There are some faults in the series not least that the last episode “Cities” which while excellent seems slightly out of kilter with the rest of the series. It serves however as a fair warning never to eat fast food in certain parts of New York and who could not be struck by the frustrating and poignant portrayal of a poor women market trader in Jaipur and her struggle against a gang of thuggish and marauding Rhesus Macaque’s. On a larger scale than this there has also been some debate and complaints about the level of animal bloodletting in the series and perhaps the warnings of this could be clearer at the start of the programmes. The hunt of sperm whale in the first episode “Oceans” may be disturbing to some viewers likewise the brutal capture and kill of a huge Greenland shark in the third episode who is fed to dogs. Yet this series serves to remind us that we are mammals that dwell in nature and not everyone has a local supermarket packed full of food nicely shrink wrapped/presented and almost divorced from any act of killing. The death of the sperm whale in particular is shown as an essential lifeline to the Indonesian villagers who take a maximum of six whales per year and battle the whale in wooden boats over an agonising eight hours. Some may argue that this doesn’t make it right but it proves that for many humans their daily existence is a Darwinian challenge to survive.

For the technical amongst you the series is stunning to watch and filmed in High Definition 1080/16.9 although you need to carefully navigate the discs opening formats since you can find yourself unwittingly switching on (for me at least) a somewhat intrusive audio navigation. All in all this is a complete triumph for the BBC/Discovery Channel and even if you have seen the series on TV this Blu Ray set repays an immediate and more detailed second visit. This is a series filmed over four years and nearly a hundred locations which is destined to be weighed down and laden with awards. It is one which the BBC should be justifiably proud of since it is a fantastic television achievement and groundbreaking in scope, scale and ambition. The use of the word “essential” at this point almost seems superfluous, order it now.

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The DVDs are much more than you saw on TV, April 27, 2011

After watching it on Discovery, there are three reasons I bought this DVD:

1. It is surprisingly raw for American TV. Normally Americans prefer to watch cute people eat dirty things, rather than watching dirty people eat cute things. Audiences complain when people living in harsh conditions kill whales to survive. Not everyone wants to be confronted with the messier, complicated reality when they can find solace in a simplified television narrative. That this show has the temerity and honesty to require a parental a advisory for “disturbing content and indigenous nudity” instantly wins a place in my heart.

2. This series presents what I believe is our best way forward with the environment. It shows an alternative to our conquer or be conquered conflict with nature. The idea that man can live as part of nature rather than as either as it’s master or at its mercy is ultimately the key to our own survival. The key is not to absent ourselves from nature, but reconnect with it. Although many of the people in this series maintain ancient traditions, most are by no means primitive, living modern lifestyles combined with traditional ways.

3. Human Planet, like the actual humans of the planet, is refreshingly polyglot. Abandoned is the obnoxious convention where a person begins speaking in a different language, only to be talked over by a translator. Instead they are granted the dignity of speaking in their own voice, with translations appearing in creatively inserted subtitles. This also allows me to practice my listening skills in some obscure languages.

But now that I’ve got the DVDs, there are three things that really surprised me:

1. John Hurt has a lot more gravitas as a narrator than Mike Rowe, who just seems a little too smug to narrate this kind of documentary as he did in the American release.

2. There is a hilarious advertisement for BBC America narrated by John Oliver (of Daily Show fame)

3. MOST IMPORTANTLY! THERE IS A LOT MORE. Not to overshadow it’s other virtues, but the reason to buy these DVDs is simply there is a lot more to see. Discovery truncated the series down to 5 episodes and a sixth rehash of clips from previous episodes. The Original, contained on these DVDs, has 8 episodes: 1. Oceans 2. Deserts 3.Arctic 4. Jungles 5. Mountains 6. Grasslands 7. Rivers 8. Cities (and 9. Extras) The Discovery condensation was not only unwarranted (what’s the hurry? Did they need to finish quickly in order to have more reruns of Desert Car Kings?) but also awkward. Although the episodes on Rivers and Oceans did combine smoothly, the juxtaposition of Jungles and Grasslands was jarring and disjointed. Worst of all, they entirely omitted the final episode on Cities, which re-contextualizes the entire series as a voyeuristic museum of the primitive, rather than a nuanced articulation of the place of nature and tradition in modernity and society.

In its entirety, this forms a vital document of humanity, nature, and a possible solution to some of our greatest problems today.

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