HOME documentary: Focus Frosburg

By Gretchen Settle

People filed in the screening room, stopping by the small table set up at the front of the room for snacks, off-brand Oreo cookies and apple juice available to anyone who would want it. The room itself was quite spacious, but there were sadly, many empty chairs for this Documentary. As the lights went down and the screen lit up, the room became a serious type of silence, and HOME began.

HOME itself is a documentary on the earth, how life came to be, and how humans, as a relatively new part of that life are now affecting the planet. The Documentary begins with beautiful scenery of the earth, focusing on a large volcano. The ashen smokey tendrils swirling from the top of the volcano juxtaposition with the rich brown of the rock and the narrators voice is introduced. Narrated by Glenn Close, her voice, mature and level mimics what many would view as mother earth’s voice. She begins by explaining how life was created 200,000 years ago and how the earth’s geology was formed to support life. “Minerals and metals are even older then the earth” the narrators explains, “they are stardust, they provide the earth’s colors,” as this is said the camera panels over an artist’s pallet of colors decorating the earth, all minerals found in nature.

Then the music begins to change as the movie begins the rise of humans. The voice of the narrator takes a more sarcastic tone. Her voice, calm and level, remains the same but the words the narrator says no longer praise the earth’s beauty, but human involvement with its destruction. The camera panning over villages turning into grey cities, the narrators begins to explain how the “genius” of human kind has begun over farming the land justified only by, “But how can you conquer the world on an empty stomach?”

The beautiful scenery of the beginning of the documentary takes a turn as well. Grey dreary cities now cover the screen. Hauntingly beautiful pictures of Los Angeles and Los Vegas pan over the screen, pretty, but now twisted compared to the scenery of nature previously shown. The narrator explains how humanity has mined the earth of everything and how the, “next 20 years there will be more extracted (minerals) than all of the earth’s history.” Cattle farms that look like, “concentration camps” zoom on screen, and the audience is shown brown and barren pens of cattle, no room to move, and no grass to eat, only grain from the farming.

The documentary ended by explaining the consequences of human nature if it continues down this path of pollution and usage of resources they don’t have. Carbon from all our mining and burning, building up in the atmosphere, enhancing global warming, melting the ice caps and not only flooding the earth and possible bringing multiple species to extinction, but also releasing pockets of gas, hidden under perma- frost.
When this happens, the documentary warned, the green house effect would strengthen, and “we’d literally be in unknown territory”. HOME ended showing what was left of the earth, and warning viewers that they only had ten years to fix this problem. Leaving the film, I felt cheated as a product of this generation, told to fix a problem I had nothing to help create. Childishly I thought to the past. If HOME is any testimony to the earth’s predicament, then even Captain Planet can’t help us now.