Anthropocene: The Human Epoch

source: Anthropocene: The Human Epoch

What an interesting movie this could have been! But instead of teaching us about it, they presented lots of pretty pictures and not much substance. 5 minutes will pass with no dialogue and the camera simply panning in or out. The pictures are beautiful, so if that's your thing, you'll love it. If you want to learn anything about this phenomenon or about habitat or species destruction or adaptation to how humans of changed our planet and environment, then you'll have to look elsewhere. It was a real shame since there is so much to say and show about this topic and it could have been a very edifying experience.

The Scarred Epoch The Barren Epoch The Ravaged Epoch The Desert Epoch The Scorched Epoch The Wasted Epoch The Extinct Epoch The Drowned Epoch The Poisoned Epoch The Plastic Epoch The Final Epoch

Seeing what we have done to the earth makes me want humans gone from this planet. We have done enough damage. Time to end the human race experiment through any means. Launch the nukes!

My take on this film will likely be unpopular, because it goes against the conventional orthodoxy, but I found this film to be boring, misleading, and fundamentally anti-human at its core. This is the classic case of 'opinion masquerading as facts.' Nothing in this documentary is scientifically sourced. I'm not saying it is all wrong, just that it is not sourced, nor balanced. This "Al Gore" level stuff here. Actually it's worse, because it is mostly images designed to provoke emotional reactions. At least Gore tried to use scientific explanations (they were just wrong, but we aren't supposed to talk about that). Using images without context to provoke emotional reactions is the core definition of what "propaganda" is. A person could have made the entirely opposite documentary using almost the exact same footage, just changing the ominous music and negative narration to one that celebrates these things as technological achievements of human-kind, and how our ingenuity can get us through these current times, if only we let it. I do not wish to paper over the fact that there are serious problems on planet earth, serious flaws in our thinking that strives for endless growth, endless consumption, and ever-risking stock markets on finite planet with finite resources. But you will notice that very, very rarely does the finger get pointed at these real root causes. Instead we get documentaries like that that just blame us, and strive make us feel guilty and worthless. That's why I consider this documentary to be "anti-human" at it's core.

What I got from this doc was that it was just trying to show that we should change the name of the current Geological Epoch from Holocene to Anthropocene, meaning the Human Epoch. I didn't get that it was trying to be an environmental manifesto like some people are claiming. It just wanted to show that humans are the main responsible force behind the current geological changes and, as such, we should change the name of the epoch on which we are currently living. It is well shot but I wasn't blown away by the imagery as I was in other movies like this and therefore it doesn't sweep you over. I can still recommend it as I found the subject matter interesting but don't go in expecting another Koyaanisqatsi or Baraka.

-Impressive how they traveled everywhere and captured so much footage. -If you like looking at videos and pictures of other places for 2 hours, boy is this the movie for you! I get it; it's trying to be deep or whatever, but I can just look at scenery on Youtube. Give me a reason to watch this. -The small narrations that come in every, what feels like, hour just aren't enough to convince me to think this is a good documentary and they aren't informative enough. Why can't you tell me more?

The pretentious editing and beautiful pictures work but the story is confusing, wandering from one theme to another without connection. The movie is interesting but not enough.

Different background, but pretty much same scenes. Would've worked if there were less scenes. This documentary should be 60 mins max.

The subject matter for this documentary is very serious, and it should make you angry, I was angry, but at the film not the topic. It starts at an incredibly slow pace, very little dialogue and the names of the locations seemingly camouflaged into the background and easy to miss. Only 10 minutes in I checked to see what the runtime was, 1hr 26m, that's nothing but boy did I feel this was going to go slowly, and it did. So to get to why this makes me angry, the narrator sounds half asleep, even sounding like she's given up on life or the planet itself already. Just reeling off depressing numbers about things that may or may not be true, there's just no authority here, and that's the problem. To paraphrase a quote from the astronaut Edgar Mitchell 'Look at that, you son of a *beehive*.' referring to seeing the planet as a whole for the first time and how precious it is to us. That is the attitude that needs to be adopted. I care deeply about the health of our planet and this documentary, if anything made me care less. We should be told off, scolded for our lackadaisicalness. Not here. While it can be said some of the imagery tells the story of a thousand words, I only felt that from a few shots and it could have been presented in a much more engaging and informed way. Some of the shots looked pretty, but it was difficult to grasp exactly what I was looking at and indeed the relevance. I'm sure the camera crew enjoyed the task of their busman's holiday jetsetting around the globe to show us the damage idle humans are causing. The film did give me an audible 'wtf!!!?' moment, I even repeatedly said it aloud to myself, but this was to the discovery of a church in Africa that was built to accommodate one million people!!! That blew my mind, and to see the Africans' unrelenting will to be happy despite horrible jobs and blinkered belief in fairy tales that only assist in the destruction of their lands via their incredible talent to carry things on their heads. I should have felt ashamed after watching this, embarrassed at what is happening to our planet but mainly I was left slightly awestruck by some of the incredible engineering used to bring about this destruction. Unfortunately I feel this was a very weak effort; the type of person like myself to watch this will gain no new knowledge or understanding, and the type of person who would be less receptive to the hard truths will be so bored there is no way they will watch to conclusion. If this was made in an attempt to try and open people's eyes to what we have become and the need to learn to apply the brakes and work smarter, great. If this was made to convince the world of science to collectively admit we are at a new epoch.... write a scientific paper!! This was not the latter I feel, far from it. As said in the heading, the seminal Koyaanisqatsi achieved so much more, with no dialogue and no words on screen. It's 38 years old but equally relevant today as it was then, watch it and ignore this. As a footnote I would like to say obviously the quote further up did not use the word 'beehive'; this childish obsession with censoring words is analogous to humanity's stupidity to ignore real world problems.