User Reviews

This does contain a substantial amount of incredibly beautifully shot time-lapse footage and that is clearly the strongest aspect of the production. Unfortunately it does also feel derivative and superficial, at times even fake compared to some of the classics in this genre like Koyaanisqatsi and Baraka that it is clearly influenced by. It feels a bit like it is half way between those and Ashes and Snow to me. The parts portraying European cultures are clearly just role-play taking us at least a hundred years back.

One can't help but notice the almost total absence of older and the strong focus on young women. Life on earth ends up being portrayed as more of an endless party instead of the social commentary you get in something like Le Syndrome du Titanic or the spiritual-naturistic message of Samsara that you see the remnants of in the way which this imitates Fricke's works. On the audio side the soundtrack is not bad but not at the level of Philip Glass or Michael Stearns while (thankfully very limited) narration offered by Liv Tyler is even more out of place here than in Terence Malick's Voyage of Time. The sound effects should have been left out.

Overall I still enjoyed the beauty of it and I always love seeing new entries in this genre. My review's tone probably seems really harsh considering that but that is just due to the standard set by Ron Fricke and others.

As a devoted follower of Reggio's work, I have rewatched his latest film countless times, yet I find myself struggling to fully embrace it. The final quarter of the documentary is undoubtedly compelling, but it's also somewhat vexing. The film places an excessive amount of emphasis on youth and women, neither of which have any real bearing on the film's central theme. In contrast, Reggio's earlier masterpiece, Koyaanisqatsi, was more impactful because it focused on the essence of what truly matters. To put it bluntly, this particular work is a complete dud.

Don't expect a masterpiece of cinematic acting... But, if you're sitting 3m in front of a 77" OLED TV and additional a 5.1.4 Soundsystem... damn, just enjoy the pictures and the sound, and, if available, enjoy your illegeal... thoughts!

Sorry but this is pretty much the stuff that I see from 100's of timelapse and nature videographers that post daily on Vimeo and Youtube. I think Malick sponsored this as a favor to one of his fans-turned-Broll photographers. Anyone can roll 100's of hours of footage with a digital camera these days and find something to edit from out of it. This was not the case some years ago, and it shows, with more careful projects which this was clearly trying to copy, (See the great Baraka, for example). I think Malick's involvement got better music to edit to than otherwise would have been, and got it out to at least basic streaming, but you'd never see this in a theater when it's all, basically, available free and honestly, gets pretty boring fast. The fans of this are mostly camera techs and other nature photo guys who are likely the ones voting this up.

Was like from another world. I can't find enough words to describe its atmosphere. Wish could have seen it at the cinema.

I tried to watch this at normal speed first, than I was annoyed at the slow mo and timelapses. I speed things up until I reach x3 speed, and still it was too slow and couldn't continue watching it. I stopped after 15min.

If you like timelapses, repetitive images and slow motion and zen music, it's a good movie for you but I prefer Samsara 10000x better than this.

Unbelivable movie. I fell in love with it ! Joseph Trapanese transer you into the another reality

A short description of the whole movie: you insert keywords "cinematic", "slow-motion" and "timelapse" into Youtube and let those clips play at random for 1,5 hours.

This movie has no story, no start, no end. There is no development, it is totally random. Don't get me wrong - there are nice clips there and some places look amazing, but even the biggest slomo and timelapse fans would just get bored during this film... I don't know any other movie, where the amount of slow-motion has been abused that much.

This movie took 5 years to make... maybe that's the problem. Aerial timelapse alone without more than a visual content is just nothing new in 2018.

Meditative piece, relaxing, calming, inspiring, full of wonderful visuals. Makes you appreciate our Earth and the diversity all around more. I enjoyed watching this unique work and would like to see more stuff like this being made! I am giving it 10 stars because there was nothing bad about it.

P. S. Don't expect action, drama or any specific storyline. It is not a typical Hollywood movie.

First of all music completely doesn't match the atmosphere an pace of the footage. You get grand and loud cinematic strings already in 4th minute of the material with absolutely no buildup and no context.

Mix of pretty but totally random scenes that amount to nothing. It basically is a vimeo/instagram slomo B-roll stiched together as one long movie.

How can anybody give this movie any other review than 10 or maybe 9? The low score can only be explained by wrong expectations, maybe it was shown somewhere where people were expecting to see a normal movie. This is my favorite genre of art and it is quite rare to see it made in to a spectacle like this. It is awe inspiring, soul clensing, meditative and most of all hopefully spiritual for all mankind. It's like a religious experience, and each viewing is an event, a spiritual orgasm. Only Ron Fricke has previously accomplished this sort of monumental epics, and now we have another. I love you Tom Lowe you are a god of sense and wonder. Please do not be discouraged by the IMDb rating, you have a following. Please. Give us more wonder, our hearts are famished!

This film is part of a genre created by Godfrey Reggio and Ron Fricke (and to some extent, Terence Malick) which I enjoy immensely. Tom Lowe and team have done a masterful job in becoming a worthy part of that group. The photography, editing, music and images are spectacular and memorable. This is the first film like this where humans are a key part of the images and story. The children and the young dancing women in particular are wonderful. The scenes come from all over the world, of course. Some are homages to Reggio, Fricke and Malick, and are recognizable as such right away. I can heartily recommend this great film.

It doesn't really have anything to say except we went on a trip and took some pretty pictures in slow motion, and we got a cool new drone.

It's essentially a magazine pictorial, all lens flares and "let's do it again with a reflector panel", no natural location sound etc etc, without any insightful comments and nothing really hanging it all together aside from some early 21st century camera features, the aforementioned slow mo, timelapse, and drone footage. That was cool last century, but is that enough any more? We've all got it on our phones these days.

The real skill these days is having something to say with the footage, and it's a skill missing from this film outside of, 'pretty'.

I doubt Malick had much involvement in this outside of lending his name to it, although his recent output does share the same visual over content failing of this piece.

Plays like a catalogue for a stock film library. The clear appropriation from other titles such as Baraka and Samsara further cheapen the experience.

Wow! I really tried to fully enjoy this but fell asleep a few times while trying to finish. The cinematography is well and all but the drone of actors is what put me to sleep. Reminiscent of how Barney and Friends used too lull me while minding the my kids way back when. A true battle trying to finish this. There are better genre films out there to stimulate all your cortex's. Baraka (1992) and the series consisting of Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi. Involved in that series are Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Ron Fricke, Phillip Glass, Yo Yo Ma and Godfrey Reggio.

Nevertheless I did get eventually thru Awaken to give it a rating.