Genesis

Just like the Director did some ago in Microcosmos. This is a project in which we can see the advances of film-making, the one that can show us images that we had never seen before. Amazing! Beautiful! This film is not for any public. If you are a blockbuster addict, don't even think about watching it.

Even though I don't speak French and I watched without subtitles, I enjoyed every single and beautiful image. From the crystallization of Vitamin C through and electronic microscope, to the sea horses love dance, from the amazing life of the walking fish to the love parakeets, from the beautiful dance of Jellyfish to the lava rivers, every single image is filled with color, life, joy and some kind of mystery.

Julio Acosta

Clearly not everyone will like this film. It is very different from Microcosmos and Winged Migration in that it doesn't have enough imagery to woo the viewer, but adds some sort of narrative unlike the first two films.

Unfortunately, the narrative is extremely simplistic and not creative or beautiful enough to hide the fact. It consists of a Negro elder somewhere in Africa, who in rather accessible, but very simplistic language explains that Earth emerged, cooled down, life evolved, organisms have sex and this is how he came to this world. This might be interesting to children or people not familiar with science and nature documentaries, but for a refined viewer such narrative doesn't offer anything compelling.

Unfortunately, there isn't much in the film for them. The visuals, while pretty, are not original at all (some molten lava, some birds, some insects, etc.). We have indeed seen most of it in countless other documentaries, which was not the case with visually revolutionary Microcosmos and Winged Migration. There are some funny scenes that usually involve anthropomorphic behaviour from animals - perhaps revealing the intention to target this film towards kids. :) If you go to see this movie, please don't expect to see anything deep, don't expect to see but most cursory description of genesis and don't expect visual breakthroughs. It's just a nice small movie with pretty pictures and some funny moments.

I caught this movie by accident on a long night. I am so glad that I did. I have to admit that I thought the narrator was a wizened old medicine man, not an actor. I TRULY did believe him. His voice is soft and melodic and based on the above review I learned he is an actor. The cinematography is stunning. How they get cameras in certain places I will never know. What pleased me the most was that their is barely any talking during the scenes. The narration is during breaks not OVER the cinematography. The visuals are crisp and clear and a joy to behold. I am truly trying to get my children to watch this from start to finish, I snagged one during the snake and egg scene, which I will not spoil for you, but which is AMAZING. Do yourself and your family a HUGE favor and try to catch this wonderful, wonderful film/documentary. From start to finish it is a joy.

a simple story ties together beautifully-filmed vignettes about birth, life, love, battle and death.

shot in iceland, madagascar, the galapagos islands and in the producers' own labs, the film features spectacular and surprising detail about nearly-prehistoric animals.

this film is suitable for young children wanting to learn about life, as well as for adults looking for visual proof of natural diversity. I enjoyed it greatly for its colour, its details and the stunning actions that it depicts.

I will never look at a rattlesnake quite the same way again...

This is a documentary that covers from the Big Bang through the evolution and life cycles of complex animals. That alone wouldn't make Genesis very unique--there are tens of documentaries, most made for television, which cover all or some of the same material.

However, one of the unique aspects of Genesis is that it features "narration" by Sotigui Kouyaté, a veteran West African actor. Kouyaté appears on camera often, in a part that seems halfway between a dramatic monologue and the traditional hosting of such documentaries, usually by academics of some stripe. The text that Kouyaté reads, which was written by directors Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou, is much more poetic and philosophical than the narration that normally accompanies this type of documentary. That has benefits, and Kouyaté tends to come across as a less manic human counterpart to The Lion King's (1994) Rafiki, but it also has problems if you read the film strictly as a documentary, as a lot of the scientific information and philosophical ideas are either incorrect or not very well thought out.

However, when covering such a wide swathe of existence, you can hardly expect narration to bog down in fine-grained, sometimes controversial points, and as suggested by the Rafiki comparison, I think it's not quite right to read Genesis strictly as a documentary. Nuridsany and Pérennou shoot for and achieve a film that very effectively conveys an intuitive understanding of holistic or panentheistic philosophical and spiritual views and shows how well they can mesh with current scientific understanding.

But aside from the above, and that is important and subtle material, what really gives Genesis an edge and what makes it crucial viewing to anyone with an interest in these kinds of documentaries is the fantastic cinematography. Other than another film from the same team, Microcosmos: Le peuple de l'herbe (1996), I don't think I've ever seen footage of animals shot as well as this, and I've only rarely seen footage of geology and inanimate objects shoot as well as this. The cinematography features amazing close-ups, crisp images, seamless time-lapse photography, impressive footage (you'll often wonder how they could have obtained some of these shots), and often-brilliant editing. At times the film resembles a collage of abstract artwork as much as a documentary, and the editing helps make the holistic/panentheistic view clear.

Long sections of the film are narration-free. Instead, the cinematography is accompanied by music, so at times, Genesis almost resembles the Godfrey Reggio/Philip Glass film Anima Mundi (1992). At least at one point, the music actually sounds Glass-like. The only slightly distracting element of the soundtrack is that Nuridsany and Pérennou decided to add foley sound effects to many scenes. Occasionally they enhance the visuals, but sometimes they're overdone.