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

This movie is a quiet and meditative work of art. At first I thought it would be something like a school movie about evolution, but it turned out as a work of plainly contemplative (at some points almost voyeuristique) piece of art. The movie will disappoint people who expect a plot line. It comes rather along like a slideshow, intriguingly framed by Bruno Coulais' experimental soundtrack (which, however, gets out of hand at the end). Beautiful colourful macro pictures. The movie's best actor, the mudskipper, almost gives you the impression that you are being watched by the movie. A joyful avantgarde experience. For those who enjoy little offstream movies.

This is a beautifully conceived, artistic myth about origin and cycle of life as told by an African storyteller in beautifully enunciated French (English subtitles). His myth is illustrated with nature photography that is both appropriate for the particular thought and, simultaneously, of great beauty. Over six years of patient work assembled this material by the co-directors who are also professional biologists. As a consequence, their myth rests solidly in modern science. Their venues range from Iceland (the opening shots) to Madagascar (for the brilliantly colored shots of marine life). This wonderfully conceived film is underpinned by an original score which complements the photography and is wonderfully innovative. I hope a video becomes available.

This film boldly undertakes to tell the story of life from the Big Bang to the variety of species that we know today. And the history lesson becomes a fairy tale.

Genesis asks that you leave aside everything you know about yourself, and think of your body as the substance that makes up the universe, your life as the energy that sparkled up the Big Bang, your projects as a shape, a limited space of organized chaos, resisting the deterioration of time.

The film is breath-taking and captivating from the opening sequence to the last shot. Every image of the film is carefully selected and placed in a sequence: swirling dirt becomes a galaxy; rings of water float on the sound of the mating dance. The technological prowess of the filming is staggering, but does not surpass the ingenuity of the editing, and camera movements: shot in his apparent loneliness, the insect looks like a genius, solving obstacles one after the other. Human meaning is attached to all images shown, from the fish pretending to be daydreaming while baiting its prey, to the crawling crab signaling to a rival. The story of the earth is told by the reality of those jungles and tropical beaches, that we know so little about: swimming frogs start to hop; the giant tortoise becomes a dinosaur.

If you think this is going to be some kind of Discovery Channel show, think again and surprise yourself.

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.