Our Spaceship Earth

I feel compelled to write a short something in praise of a film that I was lucky enough to stumble upon the other day. The film is called 'Home'; a paean to our planet, directed by the photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, well known for his stunning and emotive aerial photography. 'Home' combines this photography (in motion), with a gentle and intelligent narration about the history of our planet and our species.

I was initially ambivalent about the concept of a voice-over, having very much enjoyed similar visual cinematic pieces, like Ron Fricke's Koyaanisqatsi and Baraka, that simply employed an emotive soundtrack to complement a sequence of imagery that was intended to tell its own tale, leaving the viewer to construct their own interpretation and emotional response.

Home's monologue is however, exceptionally sensitive, both to the imagery and the viewer, and is surprisingly unsententious, being poetic and informative, yet unobtrusive. The intent of this work I believe, is to emphasise whole-istic thinking over reductionism, and to negate the separation of Homo Sapiens, both physically and psychologically, from the natural world. Rather than being part of its continuum, a facet of the dynamic meta-organism that is Earth, we have come to see nature as somehow external and separate and ourselves conversely as hallowed and special.

The style of aerial photography also reminds us that we place ourselves (and are placed) in a personal, local sense of scale and limited awareness (both of size and time), and a cultural context (religious? national?), because it shows us an effectively new perspective. Similarly, the habits of mental dividuation that arise from such a limited perspective, our faith in the validity of our own individual 'reality', and our innate fear of the vastly void of the unknown, can limit our perceptions, allow ignorance to be glorified, and make us too often oblivious to the consequences of our behaviours.

The philosopher John Gray has spoken sardonically and ironically about somehow removing or debasing our innate (yet often unrealised) biophilic inheritance, so as to prepare us for some potentially horrid grey prosthetic future. In contrast to such a dark intuition, 'Home' seeks to appeal to those better aspects of our character with an unpretentious simplicity, the vast, dynamic, integrated complexity of Earth speaks for itself; a universal, unambiguously valuable quality, that shows itself in the simple pleasure of a walk in the woods, the beat of a butterflies wing, or the unveiling of an unexpected vista.

I heartily recommend this film to all of you, and hope you all receive as much from it as I have, and I suspect you'll also wish to share it with everyone you can. Home was made under patronage, seemingly with the intent to inspire and educate, and as such was released under a creative commons license, so it is free to share and show to all and sundry.

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