David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet

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Kevin P A terrific documentary that explores David Attenborough’s career in exploring the natural world and his growing fears of all the various factors that have been contributing to the 6th mass extinction that is currently undergoing. As depressing as 2020 has already been with the pandemic and election season, I’d still highly recommend watching this as a good reminder of the ticking clock for restoring biodiversity and fighting the many problems that have degraded our natural ecosystems. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/19/25 Full Review haylee This was an attention grabbing watch that has inspired me to make a change, and hopefully you as well. So many scientific reasons and points leave little to no room for debate, so make sure to show this film to your pals who say "climate change isn't real"! Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 08/06/23 Full Review Sarah R David Attenborough shines in his latest environment-centered film about the state of our degrading planet while highlighting our roles in ensuring a more sustainable world. Attenborough wastes no time in sounding the environmental alarm, rattling off a startling cascade of statistics in the first 30 minutes: 3 million trees have been cut down worldwide for urbanization, fishing industries have caught 90% of the world's largest fish species, and we have amassed more carbon emissions in the last 200 years than a million years of volcanic eruptions could ever surpass. Deep, raw footage from aerial shots of a crumbling, toxic waste-exposed city in Chernobyl, Ukraine to the raw, bloody scene of a slaughtered whale in the seas of the Atlantic only highlight the magnitude of this situation. The film demands attention, not only by communicating the severity of environmental degradation to a shocked audience, but by rebounding with messages of hope and insistence that things can be made right. Unlike most environmental advocacy films, which aim to elicit guilt from the audience, Attenborough and his team choose to induce feelings of grief to create a more personal link from viewer to planet. The choice to focus on Attenborough's career, along with the film's message of environmental degradation, is a decision that does its equal share of harm and good. It allows the film to establish a timeline to present statistics and highlight key events, but it also creates a distraction that sometimes overshadows the message of the film. The silence that follows the reveal of 1978's harrowing carbon footprint (335 parts per million worldwide) is expected to transition into a gray, depressive shot of a factory or industrial building as Attenborough analyzes the magnitude of the number he just described. However, viewers are treated to TV footage of Attenborough's new television show that was released the following year. This almost treats the film like a promotion of Attenborough's works and trumps the seriousness the film worked so hard to establish. Overall, the film does a fantastic job outlining the fading health of the planet, but at times, the main message of conservation feels overshadowed with callbacks to Attenborough's career. Like the somber shot of an orangutan hanging from the remains of a single tree in a cleared plot of land, the film hangs onto the core message of restoring balance to the planet in a powerful way, but struggled to establish the right balance between promoting Attenborough's life and worldwide change for the planet. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 06/14/23 Full Review Eduardo H Without falling into doomerism, David shows how as humanity we have pretty much trashed the planet... But still there is hope. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/02/23 Full Review Audience Member All ages admitted!!!!!! The greatest 01 hour: and 23 minutes ever with real people and footage!!!!!!!!!! Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/11/23 Full Review Audience Member Such an important movie. It was really hard to watch at times and it did make me cry, but the end was truly inspiring! Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 01/19/23 Full Review Read all reviews

David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet

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