Review: Climate change documentary METAMORPHOSIS explores hope for the future
Ice is melting at a catastrophic rate, our sea levels are rising, global temperatures are breaking records around the world, pollution is killing ocean life, and arable land is being destroyed and over farmed. How often we can read about – or watch – the destruction humanity has wrought upon the world, time after time, before it is reduced to white noise, droning banalities in the back of our minds?
Metamorphosis, which is co-produced by and distributed by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), Canada’s public producer and distributor, and directed by Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper, tries to cut through the noise. A documentary which seeks to cultivate a sense of presence and awareness of the world around us, it seeks to make the familiar seem new, and to pursue change rather than ignore it. Overhead drone shots punctuated throughout the film attempt to ground it in an objective, meta-vantage point, as the film views the world through a variety of lenses and locales throughout the world. Various voice-overs accompany these overlaying images, describe aspects of nature, their own work within it, and the possibilities of the future – but each person, while introduced visually, is never shown speaking; Metamorphosis eschews talking heads in favour of a polyphony which feels universal. It is not disembodied individuals telling their stories, but rather different perspectives from a multivalent organism. Poets, sculptors, scientists, mask makers, designers, entrepreneurs, farmers, architects, construction workers, they all contribute words of wisdom, or warning, or hope.
But while the content of the film is delivered in this way, the central conceit of the film, as laid out by the title, is change, or at least the capacity for it. Using caterpillar/butterfly imagery as metaphor for human evolution; as one voice in the film relays, “It is possible to sustain ourselves. Humans are caterpillars right now, eating everything in sight; we could morph into beautiful, winged creatures.” Perhaps the metaphor is hyper extended, but the film occupies this space of sincerity because it recognizes how easy is it is to succumb to grief.
It’s easy to stagnate in an existential slough of despair; the film, while often inspiring awe and wonder, is also uncompromising – firestorms ravage California, cyclones devastate Vanuatu, sun baked land dries up in droughts – all of the world’s problems, easy to dismiss in our daily schedules, are made real and immediate. Yet it’s rather matter-of-fact about all of it, rather than trying to scare its audience into submission, Metamorphosis allows the scale of severity to run its course, but doesn’t leave it there. Even as the film threatens to fold under the weight of its repetitive nature, it finds new ways to envision the world. A vast sea of discarded rubber tires dissolves into countless Monarch butterflies; an artist submerges concrete human sculptures into the ocean where they form the foundation of new coral reefs, several human figures camouflage themselves into deserted landscapes, hinting at the incomplete connectedness between people and nature.
And beyond the nature documentary elements, the way Metamorphosis finds meaning in the quotidian work of the people who lend their voices to it; a group building gardens out of abandoned swimming pools in suburbia, or installing free solar panels, or designing forested apartment buildings; transformation is already underway. Even if the film may not contribute anything new per se to the discourse surrounding climate change, it does manage to find a few new ways to convey meaning about it.
