Epic documentary 'Earth' now playing

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Disneynature films is celebrating Earth Day 2009 with the release of "Earth." And Disney is intent on supporting the environment through it’s new green label by vowing to plant a tree in the Brazilian Rainforest for every person who sees the movie opening week.

The documentary focuses on the fragility of the planet and the struggle to survive as it cycles through seasons while circumnavigating the globe.

Viewers are taken on an epic pole to pole journey following the life cycle of a Polar Bear family, a mother whale and her calf, and a herd of elephants.

But unlike other in your face documentaries that have slammed the viewer with the horrors of survival in the wild, this film gets the message across in a more gentile manner. It is a cinematic masterpiece that combines panoramic and extreme close up views. Narrated by James Earl Jones, it is further enhanced by a sound track that ebbs and flows with the images and action on screen and is at one moment soothing and then rising to a surround sound crescendo.

The movie follows a polar bear family and opens with the adult male beginning his trek across the tundra in search of food. Then the mother emerges from her winter den and her two cubs experience their first view of the outside world.

Amidst the oohs and ahs at the appearance of the two small balls of white fluff, there was also laughter as the cubs frolicked in the snow.

With a final glimpse of the father bear struggling to get to a source of food, we are whisked off to the desserts of Africa.

We witness the plight of an elephant herd as it makes it annual pilgrimage to the delta for water. As mothers and babies struggle through the Kalahari Desert during a dust storm we are given another break of comic relief as the herd has a chain reaction rear end collision.

When they arrive at the watering hole, they have lost one youngster. During the day they reign over the lions already there, but with nightfall the pride of 30 managed to fell a matriarch. We are spared viewing the death and see only a few lions clinging to her back with the full Pride in pursuit.

A cheetah goes on the hunt and takes down its prey. But we see the cat’s pursuit in slow motion and although we see the capture, we also see the beauty and majesty of the cat.

A great white shark is seen as he devours his prey, but with the film slowed down 40 percent the shark’s tailfins seem to pirouette across the waves like a delicate ballet.

Interspersed with lighter moments such as mating dances of Birds of Paradise or primates shoving handfuls of fruit into their mouths, we are treated to an inspirational sojourn of survival.

At the conclusion the mother whale and her calf survive, but a mother elephant has been felled. And though the two Polar Bear Cubs have survived their first year, their father falls prey to a Walrus. But it is evident that the fragile state of his habitat is the real cause for his demise.

This cycle of life brings us back to the hunter and the hunted and shows us the majesty of our planet along with the effects of global warming and other manmade threats to the environment.

British directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield wanted to make the film “very empowering and good for the community.” Earth was commissioned at the same time as the television program Planet Earth and the directors said that was the only way the project could be economically feasible. But it also allowed them to storyboard their work for the theater as well as TV.

“We had a very clear vision that we were going to have to deliver it to the big screen, which was quite a challenge,” Fothergill said. “And we were very lucky that the high definition cameras that were essential to filming the series and this movie, became available just about the right time when we started working.”

Regardless of your views on the environment, experiencing the wonder of the desert skies, the natural cathedral roofs of rain forest canopies, and the dramatic light show of the Antarctic’s Aurora Australis, it is nearly impossible to view Earth without being personally impacted by the magnificence of our world and the fragile state if its eco-system.

Marty van Duyne is a contributing writer for the Stafford County Sun.