Film Review
“Earthling” Pushes the Boundries of Documentary Genre
By YogeshSimpson, 6-19-05
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Ducking out of the Teton Theatre and onto the rainy streets of Jackson, Wyoming this past Sunday I did feel fortunate to have stumbled upon the film “Earthling.� A friend and I had spent a wet night on Mt. Moran and made it back to town in time to see a long line in front of the Teton. We knew the Jackson Hole Film Festival was going on and figured the line must mean the movie was good. We got the last two tickets sold and many people were turned away. The film had just won both the audience choice award and best cinematography at the awards banquet the night before. Like the first screening, the Sunday show sold out and provoked a standing ovation from the crowd. I stood for the ovation too, but mostly because it was the polite thing to do.
The film’s website refers to it as a “feature length docu-movie.� As a journalist, the word documentary holds a somewhat sacred status to me, implying, in the simplest terms: unvarnished truth. I think it was the overpowering scent of varnish that made it hard for me to stand for the ovation. By laying claim to only half the word the producers perhaps only felt obligated to deliver half-truths. In the interest of full disclosure I feel obligated to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the film. Still, I’m chafed by the cavalier blending of truth and fiction and the latent suggestion that the viewer believe it all.
It’s a story about real people, real events and real wildlife, but somehow manages to feel completely contrived. The plot centers around Tristan Bayer, son of Wolfgang Bayer, who is apparently one of the more prolific wildlife filmmakers alive. After a surviving a heart attack Wolfgang decides to take his whole family (wife, daughter and son, all of which play themselves) on a two-year global tour of his favorite filming locations while he makes what will be his final film. Perhaps the most melodramatic moment of the film is when Tristan watches his dad’s heart seize up while the two are filming in Yellowstone. But Tristan (who co-directed the film with his dad) told us in the Q&A after the screening that his dad was actually at the public pool when it happened. He said he took a little poetic license.
The film actually took seven years to make and they made multiple trips to some of the locations in the film. Not to mention the various anonymous cameramen that film Tristan and Wolfgang while they’re filming. It’s a strangely circular concept, a film about the making of a film, but the making of the film was staged around the real footage of the original film. It’s enough to make your head spin.
As a wildlife film it is as visually stunning and intimate with its wild subjects as any I’ve seen. Yet the amazing footage of Polar bears battling on the tundra and orangutans playing in the treetops is dressed up with gratuitous scenes of the family grinning and hugging in a world where the light is always perfect and a helicopter is always waiting. The group is about as handsome a cast of characters as you could imagine and they glide effortlessly from one ideal location to another with only the vaguest hint of adversity or conflict. The only thread of narrative tension comes from Tristan’s metaphysical wrestling match with himself, which unfortunately serves as narration for the film. The bottomless blue of the ocean inspires some poetic imagery at the start, but his musings quickly devolve into platitudes with about as much depth as a kiddie pool.
Feature films request that you suspend disbelief, documentaries trust there is no disbelief to suspend, you can’t have it both ways. Throughout the film Tristan struggles to find his own voice as a filmmaker. As a family special on the Discovery channel “Earthling� is a slam dunk. It is an exotic and colorful beast, but if Tristan is going to lay claim to any part of the word documentary in describing it he should have his poetic license revoked.
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Comments
I also like the part about you spending a wet night on Mt. Moran with a friend.
Thanks.
PS. Docu-movies are the wave of the future.
Mr. Simpson takes issue with the idea of a ‘docu-movie,’ and the “…cavalier blending of truth and fiction and the latent suggestion that the viewer believe it all.� This, of course, is in large part what makes “Earthling� innovative and, it naturally follows, controversial. In trying to tell a story that simultaneously contains dramatic elements and exalts wildlife cinematography (and, by extension, wildlife) we consciously chose a hybrid form. Indeed, influenced as we were by our belief that dramatic aspects of human existence and the profound reality of the natural world are not distinct from one another, as they have oft been treated, pushing the boundaries of a genre became an absolute necessity for us.
As regards ‘truth,’ well, we all know this is a tricky subject. Without becoming pedantic, what counts as truth? The very idea of ‘documenting’ something— presenting material from an objective point of view devoid of any ideological investments—is of course deeply suspicious. As this is the case for both history and journalism, it should be no big surprise for it to be true of a ‘docu-movie.’ Anything captured on camera is telling a story from a certain point of view, and leaving out other possible perspectives. With regard to wildlife cinematography, even in many successful documentaries (more than you might guess), if you could see behind the camera you would note the boundary fences of game reserves, and often if you knew the background you would understand you were watching trained animals. In these regards Earthling is toward the truly wild end of the spectrum.
Yes, Wolfgang’s cardiac arrest was re-enacted (no one happened to be filming him at the time of his collapse). Yes, it worked better for the purpose of the story to conduct the re-enactment on location, with Tristan present. I maintain that this in fact makes the film more true, rather than less. It is a storied, human truth, not an exact answer to a mathematical equation. If there are stylistic choices in “Earthling� which some find distasteful, these are, aptly, a matter of taste. Sure, there were bad light days, bad hair days, on location screaming matches, moments when a family nearly foundered. We chose to share 104 minutes of the most pristine experience we could capture.
Like Mr. Simpson, we too consider documentary ‘sacred.’ Wolfgang Bayer has spent his life making them; Tristan and I have watched and studied them by the hundreds; they remain one of the greatest tools for education and bringing the wonders of the natural world to the masses. They also, however, have been largely relegated into a fairly narrow pigeon-hole. They have very rarely made it to the big-screen, and have rarely gotten the attention of those outside their intended, relatively small, niche audience. “Earthling� is an attempt to move beyond this and to share with as many people as possible a magical world which is more than ever in dire need of protection and environmental conscientiousness. This is the only ‘latent suggestion’ we hope will be believed. This is the goal we hope and believe justifies the issuance of poetic licenses.
Ken Courtney, Co-writer of “Earthling.� 7-5-05