Wildes Land

There's something quite fascinating about the recuperative ability of the land to recover from centuries of man's abuse displayed in this documentary. Isabella Tree and husband Charlie have inherited a country estate that can barely manage to grow weeds. The soil is knackered and desperate action is required. They hit on the fairly radical idea of abandoning the place to nature (except their front lawn!) and the film now follows the reclamation of this space by birds, bugs, deer, pigs, cattle - creatures that would have roamed the land freely a few hundred years ago. They even bring in storks! It's a stunning piece of photography to look at, but the underlying narrative is really quite weak and I found it allowed sentiment to overrule the one thing it fails to address - scalability. They live in a castle with no evident money worries. None that we are told about, anyway. So this looks like a worthy pet project that though laudable and impressive will, as one of their neighbours raises at a meeting, not feed the nation. When the vast majority of these complementary farming techniques were in use, the population of the UK was probably less than 10% of what it is now; malnutrition and starvation were rife and distribution methods, without refrigeration, left the food supply subject to the vagaries of the weather. What this doesn't address in any way is just how this method of nurturing the land is going to provide for an hungry population. It's largely presented by Isabella Tree herself, and she is an engaging individual but one who presents the most complex of arguments in far too simple a fashion - as if it were a lecture on the relative merits of organic methods without addressing in any way their limitations of their practicalities or economics. "Duncan" the horse and a few of the pigs have some great fun at a charity polo match and it is a very watchable film - but a little too light and fluffy.

I attended the world premiere of this documentary in a small but packed cinema during the 2023 London Film Festival. It tells of the efforts of Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree to 'rewild' the former's family farm after many years of intensive agriculture have left the land exhausted.

Townie lovers of nature will find much to enjoy here: not only the amusing antics of horses and pigs (the re-enacted escapade of the porkers in a refreshment marquee could have been written by James Herriot); but insects, flowers and tree roots are all amply featured. The camera work is spectacular (what ever did we do before drones?), even if some of the sequences are obviously staged (eg, a harvest mouse running through a drain pipe) or use CGI.

But it is what is left out that makes this less a documentary than an unquestioning filmed hymn to Burrell and Tree. Basic information is not given: for instance, how extensive is the rewilding experiment - does it cover all of the farm, or just a small part of it? (And if all the farm is involved, how profitable is it?) Also, in her narration Tree makes a quick reference to the farm's animals being 'managed' - but 'managed' how? In many institutions involving animals, 'managing' them is done with a gun - if that is the case here, why not say so and explain why it is necessary? And what is the purpose to the farm of the camera-friendly animals we see - are they merely decoration, pets, or are they eventually sent for slaughter?

Also missing is hardly any expression of differing points of view - essential for creating a balanced piece of non-fiction work. A brief sequence of neighbouring farmers having doubts about the Burrell/Tree experiment sees them dismissed as old-fashioned meanies; their concerns about ragwort - apparently an extremely damaging plant which Burrell and Tree have growing in abundance - are never addressed. And if all the UK were turned over to rewilding, how would that affect our ability to feed a population fast heading toward 70million?

So, for all the spectacular camera work, this is pretty much a propaganda piece only. The missed opportunity to counter alternative points of view - leaving the viewer with the impression Burrell, Tree and the film-makers do not have the courage of their convictions, which I admit may be doing them a dis-service - weakens their own argument.

I was disappointed, I expected organic farming. I got some rich couple who sell expensive tours of a estate with some animals running about on it.

Not wild boar, of course not, might be a wee bit dangerous?

Not wild cattle, but a breed. And regular horses.

This is how the world was they claim. Well, explain New Zealand then. Or the Pacific Islands.

They also forget most of the people way back when, were not well fed. Animals and plants went extinct even then, they suffered from disease, hunger, climate change, disasters.

Right... Watch bats eat for 70 pounds. Look at butterflies for another 70.

"visit wildlife refugia" it actually says in yep a 4WD vehicle for 110 pounds.

What a joke.

Really? A huge estate just left to run wild? And you can afford to let that happen with no visible means of financial support while you breezily dream away your days interspersed with the odd game if polo? Well fine, I suppose, if you have the cash. But it's not really going to help in the long run. The country needs to embrace nature while maintaining a stable food production base. I can't believe I'm saying this, but Clarkeson's farm demonstrates a far more sustainable way of caring for the land of this planet than this sentimental slice of environmentalism lite. Photography was quite nice though.

Wilding is one of the best ecology books of this century, and this movie does a good job of Hollywooding it up, while still presenting the basic ecological message. The book goes much deeper, and no one who read it would suggest, as some reviewers have, that Knepp is an impractical vanity project. This is a taste of how everyone is going to have to do it, when intensive agriculture has stripped the last fertility from the soil.

I wish they had spent more time the on gritty details of ecology, like the value of thorny scrub as a tree nursery, and less time on recreations of the goofy antics of animals. This movie was not going to be a blockbuster, and it could have targeted a smarter audience. Where the movie is better than the book is in the time-lapse shots of the land changing, and shots of how happy the animals are, to finally be in a land that fits them.