Genesis

a simple story ties together beautifully-filmed vignettes about birth, life, love, battle and death.

shot in iceland, madagascar, the galapagos islands and in the producers' own labs, the film features spectacular and surprising detail about nearly-prehistoric animals.

this film is suitable for young children wanting to learn about life, as well as for adults looking for visual proof of natural diversity. I enjoyed it greatly for its colour, its details and the stunning actions that it depicts.

I will never look at a rattlesnake quite the same way again...

This film boldly undertakes to tell the story of life from the Big Bang to the variety of species that we know today. And the history lesson becomes a fairy tale.

Genesis asks that you leave aside everything you know about yourself, and think of your body as the substance that makes up the universe, your life as the energy that sparkled up the Big Bang, your projects as a shape, a limited space of organized chaos, resisting the deterioration of time.

The film is breath-taking and captivating from the opening sequence to the last shot. Every image of the film is carefully selected and placed in a sequence: swirling dirt becomes a galaxy; rings of water float on the sound of the mating dance. The technological prowess of the filming is staggering, but does not surpass the ingenuity of the editing, and camera movements: shot in his apparent loneliness, the insect looks like a genius, solving obstacles one after the other. Human meaning is attached to all images shown, from the fish pretending to be daydreaming while baiting its prey, to the crawling crab signaling to a rival. The story of the earth is told by the reality of those jungles and tropical beaches, that we know so little about: swimming frogs start to hop; the giant tortoise becomes a dinosaur.

If you think this is going to be some kind of Discovery Channel show, think again and surprise yourself.

Clearly not everyone will like this film. It is very different from Microcosmos and Winged Migration in that it doesn't have enough imagery to woo the viewer, but adds some sort of narrative unlike the first two films.

Unfortunately, the narrative is extremely simplistic and not creative or beautiful enough to hide the fact. It consists of a Negro elder somewhere in Africa, who in rather accessible, but very simplistic language explains that Earth emerged, cooled down, life evolved, organisms have sex and this is how he came to this world. This might be interesting to children or people not familiar with science and nature documentaries, but for a refined viewer such narrative doesn't offer anything compelling.

Unfortunately, there isn't much in the film for them. The visuals, while pretty, are not original at all (some molten lava, some birds, some insects, etc.). We have indeed seen most of it in countless other documentaries, which was not the case with visually revolutionary Microcosmos and Winged Migration. There are some funny scenes that usually involve anthropomorphic behaviour from animals - perhaps revealing the intention to target this film towards kids. :) If you go to see this movie, please don't expect to see anything deep, don't expect to see but most cursory description of genesis and don't expect visual breakthroughs. It's just a nice small movie with pretty pictures and some funny moments.

Genesis is one of the most fascinating and relevant documentaries I have watched in my lifetime. As its title suggests, it is an account of the beginning of everything, but focuses most especially on the nature of life on our planet. It is an epiphany to watch for the first time, much like Powers Of Ten, another brilliant documentary. The truths contained in this film and the fashion in which they are masterfully woven into a much broader, overall picture are compelling, the imagery is mesmerizing, and for anyone who is truly interested in the essence and mannerisms of life as we know it, this film is an excellent introduction to a fuller, more complete understanding.

Yes, the visuals are dazzling. The pacing and camera stance are almost Kubrickian, which alone reminds us that we are seeing a movie, and not a Discovery channel feature.

There are three narratives at work here, the visuals, our collective knowledge of science/nature that we have before experiencing these visuals, and the narration. Of these, the narration is the weakest link, nearly broken when we get to the conflation of biology with poetic 'love'. That is before...

...we get to Entropy. Movies themselves are a kind of struggle against entropy. Starting with a flood of chaotic images (elements), the movie's task is to go against the flow and try to impose a higher state of order -- a sort of life of its own in the viewer's mind. Through this device of self-reference, we are given the target criterion with which we judge the movie's quality: does the new order in your mind hold up against degradation?

I would say yes. Not only visually, but narratively -- by looking at ourselves from outside ourselves, the trap of melodrama is avoided.

Watch this and pay attention to the sight of a drop of milk dissolving in water, or the smoke rings...these are inherently cinematic notions: notions that belong with us among the tribe of the living.