Ashes and Snow (2005)

When I became interested in documentaries about a year ago, I read many lists on IMDb and other similar websites about great documentaries and that's when I stumbled upon Ashes and Snow. It was described as a documentary about nature and since I love nature, I added it on my watchlist and, so much time later, I finally watched it. 

Ashes and Snow is a documentary by Gregory Colbert, a Canadian photographer and filmmaker who travelled to many countries --India, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya and many more-- to capture the interactions between humans and animals. And that's exactly what this documentary is about. An hour of the relationship between humans and animals, but most of all, an hour of humans trying to control nature and use it for their purposes. 

And it's easily the most beautiful documentary I've ever seen and probably qualifies as one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. Unfortunately, it does so only under one aspect, the visuals. Ashes and Snow is indeed a visual masterpiece. The photography is so good, it blows your mind. It is so appealing and graceful and breathtaking. And there are scenes, involving whales and elephants, that are so unique and beautiful. I feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over again, but words are just not enough to describe the visual beauty of this documentary. 

Unfortunately, that's the only aspect of Ashes and Snow that worked for me. Okay, maybe not the only aspect as the calm narration by Lawrence Fishburne fit the film very well and the music is truly enchanting, but I found it to be such a pretentious, redundant film whose purpose is still unknown to me.

Flying Elephants Productions

And the pace is just terrible, so slow it's a miracle I did not fall asleep. At the beginning of the film, the narrator says, "If you follow me, your seconds will become hours, your hours will become days", and he was not wrong, the film is "only" an hour long but it felt a day, if not more, long.