Renewed Perspectives in 'Love Thy Nature'

In the past six years, the nature/climate change documentary has become a well-established and fairly predictable genre. Icebergs melt, polar bears swim, and white-coated scientists explain that human beings have destroyed the earth. Such movies are usually both moving and scientifically accurate, but according to filmmaker Sylvie Rokab, there’s more to the story. “It’s extremely important to show us what’s going wrong,” she says. “But I felt that there needed to be a film that was more about the depth of how interconnected we are with everything around us.”

“Love Thy Nature,” her documentary premiering in Boston on Sept. 28, focuses on the profound link between humans and nature and frames climate change as the result of a disconnect between the two. “Only a reconnection, or finding that balance with nature, is going to bring us back to being sustainable as a species,” says Rokab. The film investigates and celebrates the different ways that humans commune with their environments—swimming, gardening, playing with animals—while tracing out the history of the bond’s disruption; Rokab sees the disconnect as originating in the agrarian revolution, expanding in the industrial revolution, and reaching critical mass in the digital age. Still, she insists that it is counterproductive to condemn technology along with past and future instances of progress. “I really felt there’s an important element of ‘let’s not fight over this.’ It really might have been necessary to our species to go this route,” she says. “It’s about discovering ways we can find balance and have it all, really.” And, of course, technology will likely play a critical role in returning humans to a sustainable lifestyle and the planet to a state of health.

The trailer portrays the movie as a typical climate change documentary, filled with gorgeous, sweeping, nature shots. However, the movie’s format departs significantly from tradition. According to Rokab, Liam Neeson, the narrator, plays ‘Sapiens,’ a character representative of the entirety of humanity. “He starts out in the film as very cynical, a bit unconscious,” she explains. “But he gets inspired, he figures things out intellectually…I thought it would be great to have a character transformation, a character journey.” Ultimately, whether or not “Love Thy Nature” manages to successfully execute its ideas, it seems likely to be an original and refreshing piece of work.

—Contributing writer Charlotte L.R. Anrig can be reached at canrig@college.harvard.edu.