"Borealis" surrounds you in a forest of choral music, poetic words, and scientific analyses of the symbiotic and offense/defense relationships of the creatures of the wood. And then it crunches it all in the mechanical whir of claws rooting out the trees we've come to know. This narrative set up is done in the best of movies to make us care, only this time it is our planet who is the character, and us.
However, unlike similar documentaries which discuss climate change, "Borealis" manages to be incisive about our "careless" actions as well as optimistic about our "creativity" to come up with solutions to combat the potential damages already occurring, such as efforts to reclaim oil rig sites into new wetland hybrid forests, and an individual's initiative to plant more trees. "Borealis" also remarks on mother nature's own cycles of devastation such as it's three types of forest fires which to some extent nature plans for. Nature devastates itself, but we devastate it more, but we can also deviate from our own path of self destruction.
"Borealis" is much readier to impart faith in humanity than other documentaries, though it doesn't shy away from showing slow, wide shots of deforestation, the polar bear in the dry lands, and other kind of familiar images of harmful effects. What it does differently is instead of brow beat, it shows you the amazing red squirrel and relationship with the aspen (spruce?) tree, and later, how her routine might be affected by the premature seeding of the tree due to unexpected warm days.
I recommend this beautiful, effervescent documentary and it's appreciation for both the intelligence of the forest and the potential intelligence of the human race to sometime remember that the forest is worth making efforts to preserve.
