TIFF '18 Film Review - Anthropocene: The Human Epoch

Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky and Nicholas de Pencier that their next step in their series on man's impact on the planet with Anthropocene: The Human Epoc. They start in Kenya with a staggering amount of elephant tusks in seized from shipping containers. The viewer can only wonder how many elephants were killed to produce the bounty. Anti-poaching activists speak to the damage caused to the species in the hunt for tusks. As with any contraband, the solution is to dispose of the items meaning a big bonfire in Nairobi National Park reaching to the heavens to destroy the poached tusks.

Next up is a trip to Siberia to the most polluted city on earth where the mine is king and the big celebration is Metallurgy Day where the town people play on cranes and earth movers. Among the other stops is a forest in B.C.to look at the effects of clear-cutting and an open pit mine in Germany that has wiped out multiple towns in the area as it expands and devours.

Actor Alicia Vikander narrates the latest offering from the trio that has a real talent for showing the large scale of the locations they shoot. In Noriilsk the camera darts in and out the rows of heavy machinery used in smelting. We see the workers both men and women who love their town and jobs as they know nothing better.  In Carrara, Italy a marble quarry is featured that happens to have the best marble in the world where Michaelango went to source the marble for his great works. Here the camera pulls back to show the multi tonne machinery used to excavate the resource from the white mountain.  The directors never missing a minute to show how big and heavy man is willing to go to get at the earth's riches. The battle between machine and nature is so fierce that often the backhoes tip forward onto their front wheels as they dig in to pull the marble from the mountain and break it apart.

The Atacama Desert in Chile which look like one would expect from the surface of Mars is the main location on the planet where lithium is harvested. The material is used in everyting from batteries, to cell phones to cars but the effect of the farming leaves the landscape jagged and even more barren than before. The quieter, therefore, less awe-inspiring but not insignificant segment looks at extinct or near extinct animals in the wild. Pointing to the fact that if man continues as he is going many more creatures will suffer the same fate.

Anthropocene: The Human Epoch is the completion of the trilogy for this team that looks at the environment and man's effect on it. 2006's Manufactured Landscapes started the sequence with Watermark in 2013 being the middle chapter. The directors master of the large scale spectacle is jaw dropping the facts delivered by narrator Alicia Vikander harrowing. The weight and speed by which humans have effectively poisoned the planet staggering.

**** Out of 4

Anthropence: The Human Epoch | Jennifer Baichwal/Edward Burtynsky/ Nicholas de Pencier | Canada | 2018 | 87 Minutes

Tags: Ivory, Lithium, Marble, Timber, Smelting, Crane, Back Hoe, Narobi National Park, Atacama Desert, London Zoo.