Review: EARTH DAYS

Here we are, the day after Halloween. The day of the dead, All Hallow’s Eve, has come and past for another year and we now fully embrace the autumn season, the season of temporary death. This is the season of life going dormant, but it does so with the intent of reviving itself even stronger and more fertile in the months of spring. So, for me it seems a fitting time for a new documentary about the state of our environment.

So, I can almost hear the many voices asking why we need another documentary on this subject, one that has been nearly beaten into the ground as of late. But, has it really run it’s course? Have we really seen any impact in practice from the previous slew of documentaries on the topic? Personally, I believe we’ve only begun to even consider the truth of the relationship between us, human beings, and the environment in which we live… and do so with the permission of mother nature. We are not guaranteed residence on this planet. Birth does not inherently equate a right to survive. Nature is, and always has been, survival of the fittest and we are not exempt from that rule.

EARTH DAYS is this new documentary from filmmaker Robert Stone (AMERICAN BABYLON) which attempts to tackle the subject through human eyes, drawing from the human experience. Unlike so many other documentaries of this nature, EARTH DAYS approaches the topic in a way that I greatly appreciate as closer to my own beliefs. To great extent, the film avoids preaching how we, human kind, have been killing the planet and how if we don’t change our ways we will succeed. Instead, and much to my agreeable surprise, the film actually puts our own past before our eyes, focuses on how our actions have affected us rather than how it has and will allegedly affect the Earth.

The film doesn’t focus on questionable predictions. EARTH DAYS deals mainly with what we know we’ve done in the past. The film is narrated with interviews from various experts from different backgrounds, all of whom have lived long enough to actually experience the events of which they speak, giving them added credibility. While I personally did not agree with every last opinion offered by these experts, such as one former congressman’s claim that the interstate highway was a bad idea, I did find the overall film to be a valuable and fresh change of tactics for educating the general public about a serious problem.

About this problem… I will go ahead and let you know that this review will, and perhaps already has, contain far more of my own opinions on the film’s subject matter that is normal, but I feel it adds to my ability to convey how this film has affected me, which is really all I can offer to give the reader in the first place. I am a supporter of conservation, environmental responsibility and the value of the phrase “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”.

While some of the interviewees do touch on the impact our actions have had on the health of the planet, I feel the film equally addresses, indirectly, the fact that through our own actions, we endanger ourselves just as much, if not more so, than we endanger the planet. It is my belief that nature is resilient. We, like all life, are welcome within the natural machine so long as we are not disruptive to that machine. Without a recognition of our impact and willingness to adjust, we pose a far greater threat to encouraging our own extinction as a species than we pose upon the planet and nature itself, which has and always will find a way to survive, short of the planet exploding outright.

EARTH DAYS delivers it’s message in a fashion that remains open to individual interpretation. The structure of the film resembles greatly that of an Errol Morris documentary, such as FAST, CHEAP AND OUT OF CONTROL, interlacing candid and heart-felt interviews with people speaking from their own personal experience with archival footage and beautiful nature cinematography. Many of the archival clips allow us to look back at an otherwise innocent time of environmental ignorance and laugh uncomfortably at that ignorance, but should also remind us that some of these images still exist today.

This is a mellow, hypnotically calm and peaceful film that deals with a topic that is anything but, giving the cause a less confrontational image which I believe is needed. To continue approaching this issue in a way that blames the human race for killing the Earth has not, and will not work, whereas hitting the people’s defenses where they are weakest, by pointing out that we are merely hurting ourselves by not respecting the planet and nature itself, it delivers the message with far greater resonance, tapping into the natural survival instinct.

EARTH DAYS is one of the first films that really succeeds on some level at doing this. The problem, among many, with Al Gore’s AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, is that the film was not emotionally accessible to the average American. To be quite frank, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH was boring and felt more like a college lecture than a film. People as a whole do not respond to facts and figures, but they do respond the personal experience, especially from other people they feel they can relate to and this is what EARTH DAYS succeeds at offering the general viewing public.