Homo sapiens

The Plot

The images could be taken from a science fiction film set on planet Earth after it's become uninhabitable.

Abandoned buildings - housing estates, shops, cinemas, hospitals, offices, schools, a library, amusement parks and prisons.

Places and areas being reclaimed by nature, such as a moss-covered bar with ferns growing between the stools, a still stocked soft drinks machine now covered with vegetation, an overgrown rubbish dump, or tanks in the forest.

Tall grass sprouts from cracks in the asphalt. Birds circle in the dome of a decommissioned reactor, a gust of wind makes window blinds clatter or scraps of paper float around, the noise of the rain: sounds entirely without words, plenty of room for contemplation. All these locations carry the traces of erstwhile human existence and bear witness to a civilization that brought forth architecture, art, the entertainment industry, technologies, ideologies, wars and environmental disasters.

Interesting concept that is poorly executed. There is no identification or context for any of the images. So you have no idea what you are looking at or why it may have been abandoned.

A good amount of signage is Asian. Is this China? Why is a McDonald's abandoned? Why is a variety store still filled with goods and not ransacked?

Is this parts of Japan that had to be evacuated after the nuke melt down? There isn't one title to help you ID anything.

Why is it always raining? That's the most annoying part. Every shot is in the rain and it wears on you.

This could have been interesting with the proper commentary and context. As it is, you get nothing more than a 90 minute screen saver.

I don't know how anyone can give this less than a 10-star rating! It's everything it is purported to be: A purely visual documentary of man-made structures slowly being absorbed by nature, turning into the archaeological digs of the future. There are no humans, no narration, no soundtrack distractions or cacophony to ruin the spellbinding tour that you have a virtual front seat for!

I watched this on my computer, in the dark, with headphones on - and viewed it as if from an otherworldly portal. The random sounds of nature (wind, rain, rustling paper, flapping wings, ocean waves..) were clear as a bell and gave depth to the accompanying scenery. It was very relaxing, thought-provoking, and beautiful even in its ruins.

People who have little time, or short attention spans, will not like this. If your entertainment venues generally consist of car chases and uzi carnage, then this flick is not your cup of tea.. walk on by! It is not quite a documentary and not really a movie. It's kind of like the newspapers in a Harry Potter movie: bearing photographs that are more or less still - but also alive!

So, for the patient philosopher types who are very visually oriented, enjoy the sounds of breezes and dripping water, and are fascinated by the juxtapositions of human civilization and nature ... fix yourself a hot cup of tea or java, put up your feet, and observe the inevitable ravages of time!

Homo Sapiens follows in the footsteps of Koyaanisqatsi (1982) and more recently Samsara (2011) in the way of wordless, structure-less documentaries that evoke feeling through montage. Yet the mode in which Homo Sapiens assembles itself is about where the similarities end. Samsara went through great pains to capture some of the most beautiful images ever while Homo Sapiens is very much concerned with tableaux of decay and putridity.

The images are eerily, hauntingly, strikingly beautiful. Not a single human is in frame; remnants of civilization are ever present but always in the process of being reclaimed by the earth. There are fast food restaurants fallen in disrepair, abandoned office buildings, leaky subways stations and cracked concrete as far as the eye can see. The images recall the staid, defiant sculpture works of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson in the way they are presented.

Homo Sapiens however detracts from its themes and crosses a line of good taste when it captures static frames of Fukushima amid a jumble of other images. The finiteness and fragility of human life does feel more visceral when these images come about but they feel a lot less real as well. To put it in certain terms, it feels like watching a superhero movie whereby the villain wins. The world changes thanks to a sudden and irreparable change masterminded by a singular entity. Whether purposeful or not, Homo Sapiens seems to want to put its post-apocalyptic chips on nuclear fallout.

We as a species now know better. Human civilization is likely not going to be wiped out swiftly by our own hand but in a worst case scenario, peter out in a cloud of good intentions. Not one big mistake but a thousand tiny mistakes made by a collective unconscious that lives for today; tomorrow be damned.

Homo Sapiens not a pleasant film to watch. The sound design doesn't even offer a modernist score a la Phillip Glass but rather bombards us with birds chirping, flies buzzing and wind bellowing against ceiling tiles and paper. And this is despite barely seeing anything but broken glass to justify such loud noise.

Ultimately Homo Sapiens is an art installation masquerading as a full-feature film. A moving photo album that, granted captures some interesting images but in its silence all but announces its themes. It then uses a terrible recent tragedy to mix the proverbial pot. A gambit that most may find fitting but to me, it feels like they're crossing a line.

I saw Homo Sapiens recently and have to say that I was spellbound from start to finish. I can't say anything bad about this; it was a great investment of my time spent taking it all in.

Apparently it took the better part of four years to complete & that's not surprising to me. The sound designer deserves major credit for his work... absolutely perfect in every way.

If anyone had told me the formulae for this work before I saw it, I would have said that the creators run the risk of losing their audience, but that was far from the case. It didn't lack anything at all. The power of just images and sound and the exclusion of narration and music was a bold step to take but it proved that it can be done if it's done well.

This is a very powerful movie / documentary and I think everyone should take the time to experience it. "Homo Sapiens" is one of the most thought provoking visual and audio statements that I have ever seen and I look forward to seeing it again and again. I honestly can't say that about many other movies. Now it's time to see what other movies this director has made.

Like the films of Godfrey Reggio, Nikolaus Geyrhalter's "Homo Sapiens"is a wordless look at the state of our planet but unlike Reggio's films we are not even permitted a music score to distract us, just a discordant soundtrack made of the noises of humanity and of nature and the sounds are just as important as the images, (the sound 'design' is credited to Florian Kindlinger and Peter Kutin). Where are we and what has happened? The empty, and often wrecked, buildings we see could be Earth after The Apocalypse. Consequently the film is as much sci-fi as it is documentary and like a number of such 'experimental' works is perhaps best viewed as a video installation in a gallery rather than in a cinema or on television. Did Geyrhalter stage this or simply record it? Either way, this is not a world you would want to inhabit yet in the back of your mind you know this is the world we do inhabit and it's far from a welcoming place. The Homo Sapiens of the title, by the way, are conspicuous by their absence.