I tried to watch this at normal speed first, than I was annoyed at the slow mo and timelapses. I speed things up until I reach x3 speed, and still it was too slow and couldn't continue watching it. I stopped after 15min.
If you like timelapses, repetitive images and slow motion and zen music, it's a good movie for you but I prefer Samsara 10000x better than this.
Plot summary
A documentary film exploring humanity's relationship with technology and with the natural world. Shot over a 5-year period in more than 30 countries, the film pioneers new timelapse, time-dilation, underwater, and aerial cinematography techniques to give audiences new eyes with which to see our world.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
September 04, 2021 at 10:52 PM
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.BLU 1080p.BLUMovie Reviews
beautiful images but...
So frustraiting....
I'm a fan of Reggio. I've replayed this film like 100x times... Still I can't get into it 100%. The last 1/4 is so good but also so frustrating. So much emphasis on youth and so much emphasis on female, none of which actually matters. K. was so much more impactful b/c it focused on what actually mattered. Sorry, this one is a complete dud.
Not at the level of the classics in this genre
This does contain a substantial amount of incredibly beautifully shot time-lapse footage and that is clearly the strongest aspect of the production. Unfortunately it does also feel derivative and superficial, at times even fake compared to some of the classics in this genre like Koyaanisqatsi and Baraka that it is clearly influenced by. It feels a bit like it is half way between those and Ashes and Snow to me. The parts portraying European cultures are clearly just role-play taking us at least a hundred years back.
One can't help but notice the almost total absence of older and the strong focus on young women. Life on earth ends up being portrayed as more of an endless party instead of the social commentary you get in something like Le Syndrome du Titanic or the spiritual-naturistic message of Samsara that you see the remnants of in the way which this imitates Fricke's works. On the audio side the soundtrack is not bad but not at the level of Philip Glass or Michael Stearns while (thankfully very limited) narration offered by Liv Tyler is even more out of place here than in Terence Malick's Voyage of Time. The sound effects should have been left out.
Overall I still enjoyed the beauty of it and I always love seeing new entries in this genre. My review's tone probably seems really harsh considering that but that is just due to the standard set by Ron Fricke and others.