The Giants

Fine production, world-level environmental figures, a must watch, for anyone anywhere, at all interested in environmental politics. You'll learn lots. Don't mind the music.

Brown is a world figure, and saving the Franklin was the stuff of legend. But don't you believe that other Australian legend. That his Greens knocked over a genius scheme that would have driven Australian emissions down, down. As if.

Compared with the early days of Milne and Brown, the position of women and gays is much improved in Australia. We wish we could say the same about the environment. Or indeed, equality.

At 2023, Australia practises ~ 2% population growth, dodgy climate laws, enthusiastic logging and land clearing, ongoing native species crashes, wild west irrigation, and so on. Plus ca change...

I have never been to the Franklin River, but I am still very happy that it exists and runs to sea. I am also very grateful that we have part of our psyche (thanks to Bob Brown) that we should protect our native forests.

This is a moving documentary that captures everything he has achieved for the environment but also aims to help us understand how the native forests are crucial to our existence and their contribution is destroyed when they are cut down for something as trivial as woodchips.

Regarding the format of the documentary, I have to praise the producers and directors for not giving up a single Talking Head. All narrative contribution is done through an innovative style of just voice overs - with a caption as to who the person was. It is a thoroughly captivating style and does not destroy the experience that normal talking heads do.

I enjoyed this movie, as a participant in many of the events described, and to see the evolution of a small 'l' liberal into Dr Bob Brown, a global environmental figure, and founder of a political movement that became one of the early Green parties. Bob's homosexuality, abuse as a child, and defence of his identity by his father, a policeman, and ultimately his whole family, helps explain why he has become the figure he is today. He is an everyperson. Hence his, and his party's, appeal. That story was beautifully told. The computer generated graphics of the trees were overblown, as was the political panegyric, as Bob, like all us, has feet of clay - he is a politician, first and last. Some of Bob's party's stumbling, like the privatisation of Telstra, the national communications carrier, and the critical error of destroying Australia's emissions trading scheme (condemning the nation to ten years of 'climate wars') were completely ignored. But well worth watching. Bob is not a god, nor a guru, but the Planet he speaks for, are, and we love him.