The Life of a Planet
The film “life of a planet” is set in a style resembling a commentary but lacking any distinct dialog. It exists in both historical and modern context. The themes it represents and explores are diverse but all relative to the human condition as it applies to our existence as a part of the “life of a planet”
the first part of the film explores the elements the come together in a chaotic early universe where time, itself, begins.
The crashing and mashing or early celestial bodies that form what we will call planets is expressed through the clash of the elements, fire, water, gases.
From this chaos emerges the building blocks and conditions that create the “life of a planet”
we watch as life struggles out of the emerging oceans as predator and prey in all it's forms and guises. Life fighting in an eternal struggle to exist as the “life of the planet” cycles through it's daily grind of birth and destruction.
In these early phases we can see that the “life of a planet” consists mainly of destroying all that it creates. We can see that the sociopathic behavior that we as a species exhibit with great vigor and enthusiasm have their roots in the earliest periods of our creation.
The second part of the film explores the sociopathic behavior we exhibit against one another in our race to destroy each other after rising from the violence of an amoral natural world to become the dominant species and fight for dominance over each other in a false dichotomy of natural order.
The third part of the “life of a planet” focuses on mankind turning his destructive, domineering, exploitative tendencies (that have been finely honed from the birth of the “life of a planet” ) upon the very host that created man. The natural world and all that exist within for the purpose of controlling one another and for material wealth. Concepts that are alien and artificial in the reality that is “The Life of a Planet”
the visual exploration of the concepts expressed directly draw their inspiration from the works of Guy Debord, Vera Chytilová, Sergei Parajanov, and their contribution to film but also from the philosophies of Jiddu Krishnamurti , Jacques Ellul.
Other negative ideations that influenced the film include the modern rejections of science and history and the current need for people to reject the concepts that help us to understand reality as we seek to create and define our own realities regardless of truth. Yet non-subjective truth with all it's imperfections exists and shall continue to do so weather we are prepared to acknowledge or recognize it.
“[W]hat is at issue here is evaluating the danger of what might happen to our humanity in the present half-century, and distinguishing between what we want to keep and what we are ready to lose, between what we can welcome as legitimate human development and what we should reject with our last ounce of strength as dehumanization. I cannot think that choices of this kind are unimportant”
“Before the sun rises it has a somber feeling, quiet, far away, full of dignity. And as the day begins, the leaves with the light on them dance and give it that peculiar feeling that one has of great beauty. By midday its shadow has deepened and you can sit there protected from the sun, never feeling lonely, with the tree as your companion. As you sit there, there is a relationship of deep abiding security and a freedom that only trees can know.
Towards the evening when the western skies are lit up by the setting sun, the tree gradually becomes somber, dark, closing in on itself. The sky has become red, yellow, green, but the tree remains quiet, hidden, and is resting for the night.
If you establish a relationship with it then you have relationship with mankind. You are responsible then for that tree and for the trees of the world. But if you have no relationship with the living things on this earth you may lose whatever relationship you have with humanity, with human beings. We never look deeply into the quality of a tree; we never really touch it, feel its solidity, its rough bark, and hear the sound that is part of the tree. Not the sound of wind through the leaves, not the breeze of a morning that flutters the leaves, but its own sound, the sound of the trunk and the silent sound of the roots. You must be extraordinarily sensitive to hear the sound. This sound is not the noise of the world, not the noise of the chattering of the mind, not the vulgarity of human quarrels and human warfare but sound as part of the universe.
It is odd that we have so little relationship with nature, with the insects and the leaping frog and the owl that hoots among the hills calling for its mate. We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on the earth. If we could establish a deep abiding relationship with nature we would never kill an animal for our appetite, we would never harm, vivisect, a monkey, a dog, a guinea pig for our benefit. We would find other ways to heal our wounds, heal our bodies. But the healing of the mind is something totally different. That healing gradually takes place if you are with nature, with that orange on the tree, and the blade of grass that pushes through the cement, and the hills covered, hidden, by the clouds.
This is not sentiment or romantic imagination but a reality of a relationship with everything that lives and moves on the earth. Man has killed millions of whales and is still killing them. All that we derive from their slaughter can be had through other means. But apparently man loves to kill things, the fleeting deer, the marvelous gazelle and the great elephant. We love to kill each other. This killing of other human beings has never stopped throughout the history of man's life on this earth. If we could, and we must, establish a deep long abiding relationship with nature, with the actual trees, the bushes, the flowers, the grass and the fast moving clouds, then we would never slaughter another human being for any reason whatsoever. Organized murder is war, and though we demonstrate against a particular war, the nuclear, or any other kind of war, we have never demonstrated against war. We have never said that to kill another human being is the greatest sin on earth.”
And even though inspired by these concepts and visualizations the film stands alone as yet another in the “life” series (the first of which being the “life cycle of the proletariat”) that are being expressed though and brought into being by David B. Cartwright and Steve Kusaba (creator of the centrafugal satz clock) it is highly recommended and suggested that you watch this film with Chroma Depth 3-D glasses