Mark Reviews Movies: EARTH (2020)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 29, 2020

Director Nikolaus Geyrhalter's documentary Earth is about dirt and rock, but it's also about much more. Of particular concern to the filmmaker is how technology has made it possible for humankind to be the primary factor in geological change on the planet. Some opening text informs us that humans are responsible for the daily movement of about 156 million tons of soil and rock. For context, that's more than double the 60 million tons moved per day by natural forces, such as rivers and wind.

The rest of the film isn't concerned with numbers, except those involving time. When people clear out land for property or drill through mountains for tunnels or mine various resources, they are altering formations of earth that have been undisturbed for tens, if not hundreds, of millions of years. The earth fights back, one worker in California points out, which is why powerful machines have been developed. Some of these workers see their everyday grind as a legitimate battle.

Geyrhalter juxtaposes imagery of these machines—from drivable excavators to a 16-story giant of a digger—with interviews featuring various workers, several scientists, and, in the final section, members of a First Nations tribe in Canada, whose land has been devastated by oil sands mining. Our early admiration for the ingenuity and scale of this machinery is constantly undermined by steady reminders of what we're doing to planet now and for generations upon generations to come.

The workers know it, and those who say they care at least have a series of justifications—the need for a job, the necessity of progress, the continuation of a way of life to which we have become accustomed. Geyrhalter doesn't judge these men and women, because the problem goes much deeper than them. They provide a lot of insight into the technical processes and business of massive geological change.

The scientists, meanwhile, put all of this in a grander context. One day, we will be the fallen civilizations of the past and, beyond that, the fossils compressed by millions of years of earth. The planet will keep going, or at least, in theory, it will. The penultimate section of Earth focuses the disposal of radioactive material, and if one location in Germany is any sign of others around the world, maybe the only hope for the planet is a million years in the future.

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