‘I I am David Attenborough and I. I am 93 years old. This is my witness statement. “The final dynamics of Attenborough’s terrifying new documentary on the weather crisis are extremely dynamic. It is being sold as a retrospective, a look at his life and a career spanning more than 60 years. But make no mistake about his true agenda: to give Attenborough a full warning. Here is the time ticking for the planet.It is a personal film – and also a political one.It has spirit and urgency in a familiar pleasant voice.At one point it blinks its eyes, turns red and gets wet.
You can rename a short, sharp, shocking 80-minute lesson on global heating, The Dying Planet. The short trousers that collect the fossils are a mandatory dramatization of Attenborough as a boy. And, of course, his BBC clips of a hearty young man traveling with a baby gorilla in Rwanda. What he didn’t know after that, he says sadly, is how much damage we do to the planet. “The forests and the sea were already empty.”
The statistics on the screen are ruthless. “Before” and “after” footage is worse. Before: Orangutans swinging from a rainforest in Borneo. Then: Not a forest, not a single orangutan is trying to climb a tree without a branch.
But, when you feel like this film is flooding you with openness, let Attenborough bring the light. His message in the last 30 minutes is that it is not too late if we act now. World population growth stalled. Create a phishing zone. Stop eating meat. It’s not about saving the planet, it’s about saving yourself.
It happened to me later: What happens when Attenborough isn’t around to get us out of the back of the sofa? It is a man’s extinct rebellion.
• David Attenborough: A Life .Our Planet has been in theaters since September 28, and on Netflix on October 4.
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