41. VIVAN LAS ANTIPODAS!

we have all said it.....we're going to dig to china.  i learned that an antipode is when 2 land masses can connect through the center of the earth.  and, the way our world is laid out, there aren't a whole lot of them, since drilling through many points would just get us into ocean.  the director is kossakovsky, and he visits 4 antipodes and films them luxuriously.  eventually, after either stunning vast overviews, or very detailed minutia, we get a hint of the lives of the people living in these places.  the photography is stunning; the pace is slow, but allows us to feel the presence of the landscape.  we start in rural argentina, with 2 men who live near a river and operate a toll bridge.  they know everyone who passes; they are in tune with the nuances of nature.  contrast that with its antipode, shanghai china, which is bustling and crowded, with masses of people all going here/there with no visible interactions.  the next is lake bakhail russia, a rural agricultural location, and its antipode of patagonia chile, another agricultural location.  the antipode of botswana with the big island of hawaii was interesting, much because the director contrasted the wrinkled form of the lava flows with the wrinkled hide of elephants.  the images of nature for these two were really amazing.  super close ups of flowing lava and super close ups of lion, giraffe, and hippos.  finally, there was the north island of new zealand and a location just north of madrid spain.  this was weird because new zealand footage was mostly on the beach, where a dead whale was on the shore, with concentration on the efforts of some people to dispose of the carcass.  overall, i learned about antipodes and i watched stunning photography, but i thought the editing was uneven and it was a little slow moving for my taste.  there was a delightful film style throughout; as we moved from one antipode to the other, the camera was upside down, like you would imagine it as a child, if you didn't know about gravity.  thinking about what can be found on the other side of the world from where we live is reinforced by a film like this.  there are very real differences, but there are simply the lives of real people in these places as well.  here in st. louis?--our antipode is somewhere in the middle of the indian ocean!