(2007) From Disneynature Films, the first feature in the Planet Earth series, written and directed by Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, with scriptwriter Leslie Megahey, we are taken from the Arctic to the Antarctic, following the migratory paths of four animal families. The combination of music and photography is a wonder to behold, revealing "landscapes of spectacular beauty," as narrator James Earl Jones sonorously underscores.

Aerial shots of cascading waterfalls, forming rainbows and rivers, brilliant flowers coming into bloom, flocks of birds and herds of herbivores fill the screen like an artist's canvas. In junction with the photographic pleasure of seeing magnificent beasts in their wild habitats, the filmmakers supply warnings of catastrophe for them if climate change continues to endanger their fragile environments. However, I am always put off by the anthropomorphic storylines given to these creatures.

In January the polar bears - momma, papa, and two cute cubs - emerge from their underground den in a race to reach the sea ice to find a platform for hunting seals. Ominously Jones cautions that it is "unlikely both cubs will survive their first year."

Next we enter the conifer forests encircling the boreal regions of the Northern Hemisphere where one third of the planet's trees grow, and where a lynx - "This creature is the very essence of wilderness" - roams. Suddenly it's April, and a huge herd of caribou crosses the tundra in "the longest overland migration on Earth," shadowed by hungry wolves. When a calf gets separated from its mother, a life-and-death chase ensues.

In the broadleaf woodlands, of which "only fragments remain" from the original forests, mandarin ducklings begin flight school. After a green spring shifts before our eyes into autumnal colors, we're transported to the tropics with its single, continuous season, where half of all the planet's plants and animals thrive within the rainforests (compromising only 3% of the Earth's surface); but there are "signs that these lush forests are starting to dry up." In New Guinea, after cleaning house for his "big date tonight," a member of one of the 42 varieties of birds of paradise struts his stuff in front of a prospective mate.

As a stark contrast we're shown the Kalahari Desert of South Africa as a herd of elephants trudges for weeks through the heat and dust in a "life-or-death quest for water" in the Okavango Delta. Before reaching their destination, the mother pachyderms protecting their young must share a temporary watering hole with a pride of ravenous lions in a "fragile alliance." In the grasslands of a savanna "the drama of hunter and hunted" takes place in slo-mo as a leopard captures its prey, the camera cutting away again before the blood and gore appear.

In a wedge formation, demoiselle cranes, rising into the frigid air above the Himalayas - "every wing beat is a desperate battle against the freezing winds" - perform "nature's most challenging migration."

In the tropical ocean during summer, humpback whales breed - "These shallow waters are great for raising kids" - before beginning their 4,000-mile journey to the southern seas of Antarctica, in the longest migration of any marine mammal. But there are treacherous passages for momma and babe where confrontation with - minor-key music and a slow-motion explosion of white water and jaws crunching on a hapless seal - a great white shark could end their pilgrimage.

In Antarctica, Adéline penguins march across the screen as if a welcoming party to the arrival of the whales, preceding the final act that takes place back in the Arctic with the "starved and desperate" father polar bear in need of an unprotected walrus calf.

During the end credits, the camera crews on land (cowering in a shelter when lions come too close), underwater, and in balloons take a bow (and crash into a tree).

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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