Yann Arthus-Bertrand: HOME The Movie
Posted by carrie_roll
Carrie and I just watched HOME on YouTube, a film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand.
Home was a beautiful showing of the majesty and beauty of our planet
You can watch it via the link below (the video below is just the trailer – odd that they decided not to allow people to embed the whole movie on their sites via YouTube), and if you have the ability to watch this movie on a large HD screen, I HIGHLY recommend doing so. Home has some BEAUTIFUL shots of our planet, a planet in peril.
My other thoughts on the movie are below. But my thoughts may spoil the movie if you haven’t seen it, so I recommend watching the movie (1 and ½ hours long) before reading my comments.
Home – The Trailer
Home – Thoughts from the director and writer Yann Arthus-Bertrand (in French)
Watch the full movie here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU
There are two things I didn’t like about HOME (aside from the fact that if the central theme of the movie is about “sharing,” and they’ve already uploaded the video to YouTube. So then why did they prevent me from having an easy way of embedding the movie right here on the page??)
The first thing I didn’t like about Home is that it depicts the corporation and the nation-state (pretty much most large corporations and all wealthy nation states) as evil entities bent on the destruction of the planet and humanity.
I don’t think or believe that to be true, and I’m not sure that was the intention of the movie, but that’s the impression they left me with, with their message. (Not forgetting that MANY of the companies that are thanked at the beginning and end of the movie are the very companies that are causing some significant destruction of the planet, so the message seemed somewhat contradictory.)
As far as businesses are concerned, I think the challenge is that businesses are inherently mission driven, and that often, the impact of their business processes on the natural rhythms and systems of the planet are overlooked, because they’re taught to be mission driven, and specialty focused. It’s not that they’re intentionally ripping away the natural resources of the planet… it’s that they’ve not been taught to think differently about the products and services they create.
Business requires being mission driven and specialty focused. At the same time, if our current and future CEO’s and CFO’s can learn to think in terms of overall planet system impact, they can create brilliant solutions to problems. These are incredibly smart people who can and should be given the opportunity to create win-win-win solutions (solutions which are a win for the business, for the consumer, and for the planet).
The second thing I disliked about HOME was the ending. While they did a good job of saying that we all can work together to make change in the world, the way in which HOME did this was to repeat the mantra, “It’s too late to be pessimistic.”
HUH? I suppose the message is fine, but the creators of the movie forgot something. (Or perhaps something was lost in translation between French and English.)
But the thing they forgot is that you can’t get what you want by talking about the thing you don’t want.
Why in the world (pun intended) didn’t they repeat the mantra “This is HOME.” It’s the name of the movie. It would have been a much better way to end the movie talking about what we’ve done and are allowing to happen to our HOME, and what we can and are doing to work to improve. It’s the only home we’ve got. A home we all share, and one that is in desperate need of our help.
And that we should work together to build a home where all of us can live in peace and harmony.
Overall, brilliant work on the part of Yann Arthus-Bertrand and the entire team that put together HOME.
It’s lacking a bit in depth of discussion of solutions, but it’s a beautiful movie with an important message, adding to the arsenal of education that people need to be receiving for the times in which we live.
Popularity: 1% [?]
