Science Wrap (Oscars Special): All That Breathes, The Elephant Whisperers, Fire of Love and more…
Several documentary nominees at this year's Oscars celebrate nature and science in interesting ways (photo-DailyO)
Every Saturday, DailyO brings you the weekly roundup of science news in the column called Science Wrap. However, this week ahead of the 2023 Oscars (that will be broadcasted in India on the morning of March 13), we have decided to highlight some of the more nature-inclined nominees and the science they focus on.
This lot of acclaimed films and documentaries include two Indian ventures too: Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes and Kartiki Gonsalves’ The Elephant Whisperers. Have a look at the science of this year’s Oscars.
1- Nat Geo doc Fire of Love celebrates the field of volcanology
Fire of Love, which Indian audiences can stream on Disney+ Hotstar, is a major frontrunner at this year’s Best Documentary Feature category. What sets it apart from its other competitors right now is that almost all of it is drawn from previously-recorded archival footage, thanks to the treasure trove of video reels and photographs by Katia and Maurice Krafft, a French volcanologist couple who studied the planet’s boiling hot surface together and even died together. Their cause of death? Of course, a volcano!
But despite their demise, the Sara Dosa-directed and National Geographic-produced documentary serves as a poetically beautiful take on the beauty behind volcanoes. The Kraffts travel all across the world, not only studying the composition and deposits of volcanoes but even warning neighbouring regions during times of threat. Despite their destructive impact, the Kraffts honoured these fiery occurrences as a projection of Earth’s beauty while also understanding the dangers natural disasters can pose.
The supercut of the hours of footage that they recorded ends up being a moving portrayal of a couple’s determination to approach the planet’s core. Even the staunchest of volcano-haters might stare at some of the documentary’s frames with teary-eyed awe.
2- The Elephant Whisperers highlights the intelligence of the titular mammals
Simply described, The Elephant Whisperers is a love story. It’s a love story between two aged individuals who have lost a lot and find solace in each other. It’s also a love story between these two people who become the most caring parents ever to a bunch of two bumbling yet brainy elephants. The leading contender in the Best Documentary Short category is a wholesome celebration of animal-human symbiosis set against the backdrop of Tamil Nadu’s Mudumalai National Park.
As many elephants who wander off their path become orphaned in the vast expanse of the park, an old couple Bomman and Belli take care of many such orphaned elephants. The documentary by Kartiki Gonsalves focus on two such orphans Raghu and Ammu and the inseparable bond they share with their human masters.
Belli, who hails from an adivasi background, reveals how her previous husband was killed in a tiger attack. But yet she harbours no ill-will against nature and its products as she believes humans must take only that much from the environment as required. Her plea might get lost in the hullabaloo of capitalistic environment degradation but the Netflix documentary offers a lot of optimistic hope.
The scenes with the elephants being picky with their food, playing football, and even crying in moments of separation only go on to show how they are some of the smartest creatures on the planet. This is understandable given how their brains (of usually 5kgs in weight) are twice the size of the blue whale (the largest mammal of all time) and contain three times as many neurons as humans. They might not be smarter than humans in the conventional sense but they demonstrate some notable mental capabilities as The Elephant Whisperers also perfectly shows.
3- All That Breathes celebrates evolution while lamenting on the state of urban animals
Just like The Elephant Whisperers, Shaunak Sen’s breakout documentary All That Breathes delves into the symbiotic relations between humans and animals. Sen’s focus lies on two brothers Saud and Nadeem and their endless struggle to save the birds of their native city Delhi. With sparrows having long gone from the national capital, the self-taught vets along with a glinty-eyed assistant try their very best to help injured birds in the city, particularly the kites which are abundant near the meat shops and waste dumps of Delhi.
What alleviates the documentary is also the presence of several voiceovers where the brothers get to offer their philosophy on the city’s changing landscape. The commentary on birds evolving with the needs of the polluted urban jungle is particularly interesting. For instance, All That Breathes points out how kites have started using cigarettes as parasite-repellants for some reason!
This is only the tip of the iceberg as Sen leaves no stone unturned in highlighting the brothers’ wildlife rescue work while also tying in political happenings like the CAA-NRC protests and Delhi’s anti-Muslim pogrom that coincided with the documentary’s shooting in 2020.
True to its name, Sen’s documentary truly delves into all breathing organisms that inhabit Delhi. For a film on birds, the opening frames don’t even focus on any cliched Delhi shots of pigeons flying over Jama Masjid. Rather, the documentary starts off with a haunting continuous shot on a rat-infested area with the rodents feeding on whatever they can.
Such silent montages fill the narrative as visually-striking B-roll footage with the camera focusing on boars near a sewer, mosquitoes in a pool of stagnant water, and even minute water-based organisms. All in all, Sen shows you the ugly side of an industralised nature and somehow beautifies it with enough sensitivity and concern.
4- Russian short Haulout focuses on the effect of climate change on walruses
The Best Documentary Short category celebrates nature with not just The Elephant Whisperers but also the Russian production Haulout. The thematically grim and dimly-shot documentary focuses on marine biologist Maxim Chakilev and his bonding with walruses. As Chakilev spends his days in a small hut and observes the lives of the marine mammals at Cape Heart-Stone in the Chukchi Sea (a small sea within the Arctic Ocean).
So, why does Chakilev choose to be such a loner? The scientist is waiting patiently to observe an annual gathering of walruses but the documentary covers his disappointment as the natural event gets delayed unfortunately due to rising global temperatures and the warming seas.
Lacking the cheery nature-celebration of other Oscar nominees, Haulout is a warning. What’s happening to the walruses can and is happening to many other animals all over the world. And as preachily cliched it sounds, Haulout highlights the need for human society to take a collective stand to stop this gradual yet rapid attack on the planet’s wildlife.
BONUS: James Cameron’s Avatar sequel might be an environmental tale but the water used in its making…oooof
Avatar: The Way of Water, which has bagged multiple nominations this year including Best Picture, is definitely a technical feat in modern filmmaking. Exploring the underwater environments of Pandora, writer-director James Cameron continued filling his plot with themes of environmentalism with some of the newly-introduced whale-like creatures facing the brunt of human poaching and economic greed.
But with all its good intentions aside, it cannot be denied that Mr Cameron is indeed a man who is (to put it simply) full of himself. Just take for instance, what he told GQ,
“I went on a couple of years of actually becoming an overt activist [after Avatar’s release] and trying to help them [global environmentalists] whether it was the Athabasca tar sands or down in Brazil with the Belo Monte Dam and all that and eventually I realised ‘Okay, I can be just another drive-by do-gooder or I can go make more Avatar movies and reach a much wider audience with a somewhat diluted message cause’ it’s interwoven with entertainment but maybe throw a much broader net.”
Maybe, Cameron purposely chose to leave out the times when several environmentalists from America’s indigenous populations criticised the filmmaker for fetishising their relationship with nature and yet again reinforcing the white saviour trope (Avatar’s protagonist Jake Sully being a white man who leads the “native” Na’avi to rebellion).
All the Avatar criticism aside, it is worth noting that the water-centric sequel was shot with its actors submerged in a massive 9,00,000-gallon water tank! That quantity translates to 34,06,870 litres! But then again, Cameron used up an eight-acre tank with 17 million gallons of water for his Oscar-winner Titanic. So, who are we kidding?
Cameron might definitely be an environment saviour as he paints himself to be but he’ll clearly use up a considerable chunk of the planet’s water if he continues at this rate.
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