The Secret Life of Plants

I saw this Paramount flick quite a few times, back when I was a projectionist just out of high school at the local art movie house, (this was circa 1982). I remember it being a mixture of dry documentary stuff and wonderful musical bits. Of the docu part I remember a scene where they hook a plant up to electrodes and measure it's sensitivity while they chop a head of lettuce in front of it (the plant freaks out on the machine's readout). I also remember a cool time lapse sequence with flowers blooming while they play "Here Come's The Sun". And the bits with Stevie Wonder wondering through a field of flowers was cool (and comical, as there was nothing for him to bump into). I've searched for years for this on video but I'm sure it's held up in musical right's limbo (that and the fact that no one's ever heard of it).

I saw this movie in the mid 1980's in Berkeley. I found it at times incredibly touching, at other times uproariously funny. I left the theater convinced that plants are sentient beings who experience love, pain, and loss. My conviction and enthusiasm have waned over the years, but I still sometimes feel a twinge of guilt when I bite into a stick of celery. My son is now in fourth grade and wants to do a science experiment for school in which he tests whether or not plants that are talked to grow better than plants who are emotionally neglected. I think this film would be informative and helpful for him, but I can't find a copy anywhere. Does anyone know how I can borrow or rent a copy?

I saw this film when it was briefly released in 1980, in Berkeley, California; and I've watched this film many times since (having downloaded a copy from bittorrent). Seeing the film will help people understand Stevie Wonder's misbegotten album, _Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants_, which was released in 1979 before the film had even appeared. Somehow, with the help of the film's producer, Michael Braun, Stevie Wonder composed a score for a movie he could never have seen.

The film does have its glorious moments: lengthy sequences in time-lapse photography show plants growing, unfolding, and transforming. For these, Stevie Wonder provided closely-linked music (from "Earth's Creation," "The First Garden," and "Seasons"). Other Stevie Wonder songs are tied in with the movie. The first song on the album, "Same Old Story," is virtually impossible to comprehend unless you have been introduced to the work of Jagadis Chandra Bose, a 19th-century Indian physicist who devised delicate equipment to monitor electric impulses from plant tissue. Stevie somehow condenses Bose's work, and that of George Washington Carver, into a few rhyming quatrains, producing poetry more humorously garbled than anything else he's written. "Venus Flytrap," not surprisingly, follows the adventure of a fly dumb enough to be caught by an insect-eating plant. "Outside my Window" accompanies organic gardening, while _Black Orchid_ is given an interpretive dance by Eartha Robinson, clad in a full-body green suit. 'Race Babbling"--heard in only a few short sequences--contemplates one of the consequences of time-lapse photography: if plants unfold in unspeakable slowness, what must the restless activity of humans look like to plants? Anyone who has seen the later _Koyaanisqatsi_ (1983) will recognize the disturbing effect of speeded-up human life, underscored by Stevie Wonder's dissonant music.

All these sequences are linked together by the music to Stevie Wonder's title piece, "Secret Life of Plants," which appears in various disguises until finally revealed at the end of the film in Wonder's only appearance. He wanders across bleak, rocky landscapes and fields of flowers without his sunglasses (the same sequence that produced the photo in the album), and even rows a boat!

Other than these sequences, the film itself is dull: ineptly edited, tedious in its explanation of scientific experiments (including some absurd ones conducted by Soviet scientists), and narrated in a dull monotone that will remind one of high-school filmstrips. it's easy to understand why Paramount Pictures decided to drop the film. (The director, Walon Green, went on to fame as the screenwriter and producer of _Law and Order_ on TV.) It's just too bad today that the film is unreleased on DVD, since it is the only way to fully understand an inspired, if overly ambitious, project by Stevie Wonder.

The Secret Life of Plants is worth viewing, if only because it is so hard to come across it. It originally appeared in theatres in the USA for about two weeks (and then only in "artsy" theatres), and reappeared once for a week several years later. It is not currently available on video.

The story is a documentary of research that shows fairly conclusively that plants are actually aware of what goes on around them, even miles away. It is somewhat humorous in the methods it uses to prove the secret life of plants, but thought-provoking in the conclusions it arrives at. The most wonderful thing about the film is the soundtrack. This is original music composed by Stevie Wonder. There is even a scene in the film of Stevie singing one of his songs in a boat on a river. This scene is very moving, as Stevie is blind and yet able to know where he is going. The scene is the climax to the movie, and metaphoric as to what has been presented about plants, that although they don't seem to have senses as human beings and animals do, they are quite well aware of what is going on around them and where they fit into this in the evolutionary process.

The Secret Life of Plants is a long, rambling documentary built around New Age pseudoscience - seeds communicating with distant stars, laughably dubious "experiments" such as a telepathic cabbage identifying the "murderer" who mutilated a fellow vegetable, etc.

But if you can get past the crackpot stuff, it's an audio-visual treat. Spectacular cloud forests, stunning macro and time-lapse photography, and an astounding original soundtrack by Stevie Wonder.

The soundtrack stands on its own, and is available on CD; the movie remains unavailable on DVD or VHS, but turns up occasionally in art house theatres.