Anthropocene

"Anthropocene: The Human Epoch delivers a powerful warning of a world in decline. A movie thousands of years in the making, Anthropocene: The Human Epoch takes cameras to where our consumptive need has most alarmingly re-engineered the planet. Its also, in many ways, a document of a spiritual/environmental undoing. Filming across a dozen countries, Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky continue the visual breadth of their previously observed warning shots about the scope of progress (Manufactured Landscapes, Watermark) with a reflective tour of excavation, industry and decimation that argues weve already moved into a new geological epoch owned entirely by us. Dotted with alarming facts delivered in gravely intoned voice-over by Alicia Vikander, Anthropocene finds the terrible awe in town-destroying terraforming projects in Germany worked by earthmovers of Mad Max-like magnitude, the sweeping wretchedness of a city-sized African landfill scavenged by thousands of the poor working alongside sickly looking pelicans, and what the acid-caused bleaching of coral reefs looks like via time lapse photography. Artfully composed vérité meant to confound and disturb as it gives eye-in-the-sky views of belching factories, hacked forests and vast lithium-extraction ponds while occasionally crashing to earth for a brief testimonial from an affected human, the film isnt the most cohesive look at startling global transformation. Its strongest, however, as a dizzying, dimensional tour of scale and time, forcing us to wonder how a sense of earth-centric balance can be restored." - LA Times Sept 25 2019