Home is a tone-poem about the planet. Based on the breathtaking aerial images of Yann Arthus-Bertrand, this visual masterpiece attempts to do Planet Earth justice on the computer screen – for that is where is it designed to be watched – leaving the viewer with a deep desire to retain and heal what there is and what we are destroying.

That seems to be the intention, anyway, and for large parts of it my emotions were pulled from one pole to another, between awe and disgust, love and hatred, peace and anger: let there be no doubt, the message that modern human civilization is a turbulent and vile force for ecocide comes through like a shout.

So, I did wonder why the start of the movie along with the YouTube viewing platform is an advert for PPR. “PPR is proud to support HOME”. That’s what it says. PPR is a luxury goods company, responsible for driving the unsustainable addiction to fashion across the world, eating up resources faster and faster so we can never keep up with the unreachable dream we are constantly sold. And yet, somehow, they support this. What a blatant and terrible piece of greenwashing! I make no bones about how wrong this is – the message is already confused and we haven’t yet started.

But there is more that I need to criticise: First, the narrator refers to hunter gatherer lives as hard, short and “scrabbling for food” when we know that hunter gathering can be completely the opposite if done properly. This is a very unenlightened “enlightenment” attitude, unfortunately. Second, the movie doesn’t acknowledge that agriculture and the birth of cities was the first great downfall for the ecology (it simply says it was the first great “revolution”, in positive terms). There is no mention of semi-cultivated / domesticated food usage and permaculture: both of which are (still) common today. Third, the narrator refers to fossil fuels freeing humans of their “toil” on the land. When non-industrial life is couched in such negative terms, this is hardly likely to encourage people to turn away from civilization. “Comforts” and “human genius” with reference to our use of oil is the reverse, while showing huge cities, these words put a positive spin on our addiction to growth.

This is all in the first third of the movie; then at 25 minutes it gets good – very good. For the next hour, the movie becomes a cutting, and very well argued critique of our current situation: beautifully shot with sublime and frightening images that accompany an inarguable case against our toxic treatment of every ecosystem on the planet. The comment about trees and humans, “Our cells talk the same language, we are of the same family” suggests it wants us to connect with nature. After half an hour of this necessary battering I was feeling pretty down. What we clearly need is to reconnect with the real world and reject anything that refuses to be connected and tries to keep us disconnected. To stop this horrific system in its tracks.

It is obvious that “Home” is no longer a good place to be, if we carry on treating it like our doormat. But my concern is not just of our ecology: some of the language in this film jars terribly. At 58 minutes we hear: “Denied access to daily necessities like water, sanitation and…electricity”. Electricity? There is a residual “need” for industrial civilization evident here, otherwise surely it would have said, “and, because city living has substituted technology for tools, electricity.” Then we are told: “Hunger is spreading once more.” This suggests the filmmakers only see the “good” times as between the rise of agriculture (6000 BP) and the overurbanization of the Earth (now).

With 10 minutes to go I was bombarded with tales of good things that are going on: reforestation, education, preservation, New York getting all its fresh water from the surrounding lakes…hang on. How much water? What would the lakes be like without the extraction? And a log raft is floating down the river in Gabon – written on the side is “Sea Hope”. Or does it mean: “See Hope”?

“Let’s be responsible consumers” – Stop right there! I am not a consumer, I am a human being. Where is the return to the world where we didn’t destroy by default: carbon capture and storage, wind farms, solar panels tumble across the screen. We must keep consuming but let’s do it sustainably; but we must keep consuming because the movie won’t dare acknowledge what is so obvious. After all, what would the sponsors think?

Give me the choice and I would only show the beautiful and frightening middle section, and then ask: “What do you want to do now?” I think at least some of us would come up with something that might actually give us a future.

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To watch “Home” go to http://www.youtube.com/user/homeproject

Keith Farnish
http://www.amatterofscale.com