Movie Review: Force Of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie

David Suzuki. Photo / Supplied

Lest I be labelled a seal-clubber and eater of endangered species, I say at the start that no sensible person could disagree with any assertion in this film.

I am not sure that it completely answers questions about the tension between the economic benefits and the environmental costs of logging, but let that pass.

The Canadian-Japanese geneticist, broadcaster and environmental activist who is the subject of the movie has an important message and he delivers it ringingly well.

The trouble is that the film itself is a plodding, well-meaning bore. It was conceived as a record of Suzuki's "Legacy Lecture" - a sign-off from half a century of academic work at the University of British Columbia, which he also delivered in this country late last year.

And if it had ended up like that, it might have been more successful, particularly since the lecture itself does not seem to be available online.

Instead, the oratory is intercut with a survey of Suzuki's career, in which he is taken to his old haunts - the internment camp in which his Canadian-born parents were held after Pearl Harbour; the Defence Department lab in Tennessee where he worked as a young man; UBC, where, in paisley shirt and headband, he was the embodiment of professor as rock star.

None of these sequences is without interest, but they are intercut with passages from the lecture in such a way that each element detracts from the other.

What was doubtless a thoughtful speech is reduced to soundbites, the biography becomes episodic and stilted. The result is too reverential - a tribute to the man, not his ideas.

The title is drawn from Suzuki's idea that mankind has become a destructive force in, rather than an inhabitant of, Planet Earth.

But the straight-faced use of the term to describe the man himself betrays the film's hagiographic subtext. A missed opportunity.

Stars: 2.5/5
Director: Sturla Gunnarsson
Running time: 92 mins
Rating: PG (coarse language)
Verdict: More reverential than intelligent

-TimeOut