David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet

At ninety-four, David Attenborough sits in front of the camera and offers what he calls a witness statement. As he narrates his own career year by year, each period is annotated with the world population, the carbon figure in the atmosphere and the percentage of remaining wilderness. The numbers get worse as he talks. The subject is not the beauty of nature but the fact that what has been lost within one human life can be measured. Attenborough shows his own earliest footage and sets it beside the same places today; the whole argument is in that comparison. The form splits in two. The first half is loss, the second is remedy: concrete proposals on birth rates, marine protected areas, farming and energy. The ending lands somewhere more hopeful than you expect. The film opens and closes at Chernobyl, which Attenborough uses as the visible form of a planning error. Among the directors is Alastair Fothergill, who worked with Attenborough for many years. It was released on Netflix in 2020. Who it is for: viewers of nature documentaries and anyone wanting an overview entry into the climate argument. Who it is not for: readers expecting new information; the film is built to spread an argument, not to go into detail.