With 12,000 ton and ten story high machines on the move in German forests, pools of lithium gleaming in the Atacama Desert sun, 10,000 elephant tusks on fire in Kenya, furnaces glowing in the world's largest heavy metal smelter in Norilsk and Lagos growing to 20 million inhabitants, we tipped the balance of the earth. The Holocene Epoch is done and the age of mass extinction, planet altering industry and swift climate change gaining momentum.
This astonishing, mesmerizing and disturbingly beautiful documentary presents stunning images and commentary from around the world with the hope that human tenacity and ingenuity might assume a new direction. It is not accusatory but grounded in humility and open-mindedness (what humanity needs for any shift in consciousness). It is not a vision or rumination on the future but what is real and already here. What a wakeup call! Grounding moments of humor and insight, such as when Russian women talking about little flowers blooming in barren rock and Russian men joking about their work, brighten the film. I wish there was more depth in places, but overall Anthropocene is insightful, revelatory and compelling. Seen at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival with the directors in attendance and providing input for this review. They recorded 300 hours per one hour of film.
