Earth: An Unforgettable Day – Earth: One Amazing Day (2017)

Directed by: Richard Dale, Lixin Fan, Peter Webber | 95 minutes | documentary | Narrator: Thom Hoffman

The makers of “Earth” have been able to uphold their name for years with programs and films that show the various aspects of the earth at their best, but “Earth: An Unforgettable Day” (“Earth: One Amazing Day”) is the first official follow-up to the legendary 2007 blockbuster hit. ‘Earth: An Unforgettable Day’ may be a somewhat misleading title, as it suggests that everything you see in this BBC Earth wildlife documentary happened or was shot in one day, but nothing is of course less true.

That one day in the title refers to the structure the filmmakers have given this documentary: from early dawn to the hours between dusk and night. The film starts as the sun rises just above our ‘happy planet’, as Mother Earth was already called in ‘Earth’. The animals that become active at that time, or that – in the case of the serval in Kenya – perform their last tasks before going to sleep, are beautifully portrayed. Most do not suffer from a morning mood. The somewhat childish addition to the sound mix immediately catches the eye, which crops up more often later in the documentary. When the serval’s prey narrowly escapes its clutches, we hear the cartoonish sound of a race car. Much more exciting are the images of the marine iguanas on the Galapagos Islands, which allow themselves to be warmed motionless by the morning sun. The snakes twisting around them pose no danger to them, but they do pose a danger to their newly hatched babies. It is spectacular to see how these snakes lurk and how the young iguanas, who have not yet set foot on earth, have to run for their lives right from their first steps.

‘Earth: An Unforgettable Day’ continues with images of a giant panda with cub and a young zebra crossing a river for the first time, with all the accompanying dangers. We see breathtaking images of the narwhals making their way through the ice at the North Pole. The fragments of a brown bear rubbing against the rough bark of a tree to relieve the itch caused by the warm sun are accompanied by a comically intended tune. And also under the scene in which two giraffes compete against each other in a fight for territory and the females, we hear a standard ‘western stand-off’ melody. Making the documentary child-friendly is a bit of a distraction from the peerless images collected with endless patience by the professionals at BBC Earth, but it’s a small blemish on an otherwise virtually flawless film.

By the time we get to the mayflies, which come to life in Hungary’s Tisza River for the sole purpose of breeding, the film is almost over, but this ‘unforgettable day’ could easily have had a few hours left. may last longer. Although repetition is lurking (and there are actually images that will be very familiar to the BBC Earth connoisseurs), ‘Earth: An unforgettable day’ is due to the new structure, editing and the now further developed filming techniques. definitely worth it.