David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet
An account of the state of our natural world with an awful warning to all of us.
The subtitle to David Attenborough’s film refers
not only to the natural history of planet Earth itself but also to his
own life which has mainly been taken up with the study of animals and
their behaviour and latterly global ecology. He is now 94 years old and
his interest in life on our planet began from the age of ten. In one
way or another he has always been involved with understanding the
natural world. Even when he was running the BBC2 television channel in
the 1960s, he continued to make programmes on the subject. He went on
to make a variety of television shows until the Big One happened with
the beginning of his Life on Earth
series in 1979. Its success led to several further programmes and more
in the ‘Life’ series on plants, birds, mammals, and so on.
There
is surely no better authority than Attenborough to convince us now that
we need to be saving a world he has so assiduously covered on
television. His latest film opens with him visiting Chernobyl which
has, after over thirty years, remained exactly as it was at the time of
its nuclear explosion – the same, that is, apart from the plant and
animal life that has continued to flourish on the site. As he takes us
through the years of his professional life, Attenborough charts what
has happened to the natural living world. Because of the effects of
global warming and climate change, the melting of the polar ice caps,
the rabid destruction of rainforests, the death of coral reefs, the
overuse of soil leading to food shortages, coupled with population
increases, our future life on Earth could be threatened with ultimate
extinction.
This is Attenborough’s witness statement born
out of his own lifetime of experience and, he says, if we don’t do
something now, it may be too late. Biodiversity is one answer plus
limiting the population growth, increasing world healthcare, putting
natural elements such as wind, water, geothermal and solar energy to
work, limiting the overfishing of coastal waters, stopping
deforestation and changing our eating habits by the increased use of
plant foods over meat products.
All this may not happen in
David Attenborough’s lifetime but he still presents a cogently urgent
warning to us all while we still have time to change our view of this
Earth of ours. It might be a case of the nonagenarian Attenborough
passing the baton to the teenager Greta Thunberg (q.v. I Am Greta)
to continue conveying the message that will affect all of us and the
future of life on our planet. If we stop ruining the natural world
about us and take stock of the problems, life on Earth might just
continue to survive, just as it has done again in Chernobyl.
MICHAEL
DARVELL
Featuring David Attenborough and Max Hughes (as the young David).
Dir Alastair Fothergill, Jonnie Hughes and Keith Scholey, Pro Jonnie Hughes, Screenplay David Attenborough, Ph Gavin Thurston, Ed Martin Elsbury, Music Steven Price.
Altitude Film Entertainment/Silverback Films/World Wildlife Fund/Netflix-Altitude Films.
83 mins. UK. 2020. Rel: 28 September 2020. Cert. PG.