Eye For Film >> Movies >> What Part of the Earth Is Inhabited (After Pliny the Elder) (2009) Film Review
What Part of the Earth Is Inhabited (After Pliny the Elder)
Reviewed by: Andrew Robertson
Vague shapes and colours, reds, yellow; light, heaven, sea, land. Making way for water, sky, waterfalls and icebergs, beaches and lichens, then trees, trees, trees. Is it evolution? The notes suggest as much. We see insects, flowers, allusions to dinosaurs, the skin of lizards, the eyes of tortoises. Some of the footage appears identical to that of Journal & Remarks, picturing crabs, seals. It should be pointed out that a lot of what Pliny wrote was nonsense, or at least things to which fact has subsequently been found to contradict.
As this silently unfolds, it's surprising when we see a ship. Among the footage of seals rests another, and then there is the vague image of a person, an aeroplane, a tailing off. Evoking (to some extent) the chaos of evolutionary development, What Part of The Earth... could perhaps have done with some competition - as a selection of natural things it is messy, seeming unmoderated, but art at least ought to have a directing intelligence. Though pleasant enough to look at, it fails to grab.
Reviewed on: 11 Oct 2010