David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet

The fascinating work by a natural historian with 70 years of experience

Documentary
83 min     8.5     2020     United Kingdom

Overview

David Attenborough is one of the first who started to take pictures of wildlife and talk about it to viewers.

Attenborough, who turns 94 this year, is the only person to have received BAFTA awards for black and white, color, 3D, HD, and 4K shows. And he continues to work actively to this day.

The career of David Attenborough undoubtedly deserves respect, and David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet is a summing up of a long creative life. And besides, this is Attenborough's indictment against humanity. Taking pictures of animals for 70 years, the naturalist has visited the places that he had previously visited and seen with his own eyes how people destroy nature, how during the life of one person the landscape changes and entire ecosystems disappear.

Attenborough has talked about declining forest area problems, reducing biodiversity, pollution of the world's oceans, melting permafrost for many years. His TV-shows tell about all these themes for the last three decades. This is why David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet may seem to be assembled from other his programs.

In David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, naturalist focuses on solving global problems, suggesting how to prevent a global crisis. The film begins and ends in Chernobyl; it clearly shows how the Earth can become uninhabited through human fault. Attenborough shows how it heals itself when anthropogenic pressure disappears.

Reviews

CinemaSerf wrote:
The thing that makes this documentary so inspiring is that it is not a lecture. Sir David Attenborough demonstrates through his wealth of experience over the years, the chronology of the decline of the natural world without preaching to us. The beautiful imagery accumulated over 50 years of natural history film-making coupled with a considered, poignant and practical analysis of where we were/are and want to be offers stark warnings, certainly, but also scope for hope and optimism too if only we can get a grip. His manner is affable and authoritative, he is the teacher every one of would have loved to have had - and perhaps, had we, things wouldn't look quite so ominous! The photography - particularly the archive - is gorgeous to look at and underscores perfectly the points he is making, and the global perspective he takes gives this a currency far and away more valuable and penetrating than any politically driven assessment. It's a wonderful film that everyone ought to see. It also serves as a fitting testament to the visionary people at the BBC (often together with WGBH) who created these documentaries over many, many years - providing an essential spine for this narrative, but also so much of my own understanding of how the planet works. It is a shame that the BBC is now heading for a similar extinction level event; with - sadly - very few ready to take up the cudgels on it's behalf.

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