David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet

A 94 years of age, anybody might provide interesting testimony about the way the world has changed across their lifetime. David Attenborough, who has probably visited a wider variety of wild environments than anybody else alive, has something still richer to offer. In this documentary, described as a witness statement for the natural world, he reflects on a lifetime's observations of environmental change. It's an inevitably tragic tale but not one without hope, as the much-loved presenter continues to believe in the potential for positive change and a better life for all of us.

This very personal but always erudite account begins, of course, in black and white, with footage of the young Attenborough the explorer pushing through jungle thickets in Papua New Guinea - a time, he recalls, when things were getting better and better for humans across most of the world. Looking at us as a species, as neutrally as he can, he observes the way that he had wiped out (most of) our natural predators and established incredibly efficient networks of food production, so we simply no longer had to contend with the natural limits facing most species. Cut to a ticker showing escalating population numbers. This reappears throughout the film, culminating in some shocking statistics. Just one of them - that humans now make up a third of all the mammalian body mass on Earth - should give you pause for thought. To sustain this imbalance we have pursued more and more desperate measures. To sustain it in the future, now that our ecosystem is toppling, we will need to take decisive action.

Illustrated with clips from throughout the naturalist's career, the film carries us from a time when its seemed that there were endless new discoveries to make to one when many of the species featured early on are endangered or extinct. Attenborough reflects on how his job has changed - how early audiences were wowed by the sight of creatures they had never seen before, how the sense of a connection with different creatures helped to end activities like whaling, and how, today, it's important to illustrate the crises affecting different parts of the environment, to inspire people to take action so that we can save as much as possible (and perhaps even ourselves). He considers the illusion of infinite space when one is standing on the savannah and how aerial shots can literally expand our horizons, putting such spaces into perspective.

Then there's the famous shift in perspective offered by the first photographs of the Earth as seen from space. Far from a critique of technological progress, this film celebrates it as a tool for educating people about their environment. Attenborough firmly believes that we need more, not less, technology in order to survive the crisis that we have created, and the latter section of the film provides tantalising glimpses of its potential.

In between the archive clips, Attenborough speaks directly to camera. There is no hyperbole here. He is calm, measured, but that face that is familiar to all of us - in most cases from childhood - occasionally stiffens just slightly with the weight of sorrow, those clear eyes touched by tears. Recent footage shows him walking around the area where he grew up, in remarkable shape for his age, but there's a hint of fragility in his voice. He knows that he won't be hear to do this for much longer, knows that this may be his last chance to get people to listen. What happens next is up to us.