DVD Reviews

Life - DVD Review

By June L. Jun 2, 2010, 16:51 GMT

From the BBC and the Discovery Channel, producers of Planet Earth and The Blue Planet: Seas of Life, comes the newest landmark natural history series, Life. In Planet Earth, we brought you the world as you’ve never seen it before. Now, get closer with Life. Four years in the making, filmed over 3000 days, across every continent and in every habitat, with breathtaking new high definition filming techniques developed since ...more

Life on planet Earth is breathtaking, full of wonder and beauty, with strong elements of harshness and seemingly cruel dramas occurring in every second.  Oprah Winfrey narrates this fascinating journey into the lives of Earth’s children, not just human beings, but a variety of life forms that call this planet home.

Each episode of this incredible series begins with the words “Open your eyes to beauty, to power, to wonder, Life.”  In fantastic visual images and informative narrative, we are able to explore the existence of the varieties of life in over 200 different species spread over seven continents. 

In a project that took over three years to film, using seventy camera crews in three thousand hours of shooting time, Life gives us some of the most breathtaking and incredible views of plants, birds, reptiles, mammals, amphibians and fish ever captured.  From the opening episode it is evident that this adventure is not simply pretty pictures of far away places. 

All life on Earth is a challenge, simply to survive, and there is a cycle of hunter and hunted that pervades in most of existence.  Some of these moments in the series are extreme and dramatic and probably not suitable for younger children’s viewing.  

All forms of life need sustenance, and will go to great lengths to acquire water, food or light.  Once that is achieved, then the urge to reproduce takes over introducing another set of problems, including parenthood and protection of offspring. 

There are amazing moments such as the tiny strayberry dart frog no bigger than a fingernail who laboriously carries each of her tadpoles from the floor of the rainforest up to a bromeliad “nursery” in the tree tops, depositing each baby in a different bromeliad formed pool and then tends them until they can fend for themselves.  Often adaptability and change is necessary for survival. 

Those who cannot do this face extinction, and so the film crews have captured new behaviors such as the three cheetah brothers who have learned to hunt as a pack, differening from their species usual solitary hunting style.  Or plants such as the sundew that live where nitrogen is scarce, and so have adapted to be “hunters” luring in insects and trapping them to use as a source of what cannot be obtained in their soil or water. 

As different as all life appears, in many respects we are similar.  Capuchin monkeys have learned to collect and dry palm nuts and then take them to an “anvil” of rock and pound them open.  The babies mimic the adult’s behavior, and it takes nearly eight years for a young monkey to develop the proper skill to crack the nut. 

Bottlenose dolphins have learned to make a mudring, stirring up a circle of mud around a school of fish, confusing them and causing them to jump right into the waiting dolphin’s mouths.  In endlessly fascinating stories, viewers will learn much and appreciate more the meaning of Life.

Life is presented on four discs with 11 episodes.  Beginning with the episode The Challenge of Life, outlining the series objectives to the final episode The Making of Life which introduces viewers to the perils of such a project, this is an amazing journey. 

Each disc has bonus features of Making of’s for the episodes, and the final disc has a section of deleted scenes.  Just about any superlative could be attached to this production from beautiful to frightening, to awesome.

Visit the DVD database for more information.