This movie is an example of the genre I call The Parochial Sublime.

Since Burke, we've all know what the Sublime is, about Awe and Horror, about the acceptance of, and seeing the beauty in, something very very different from ourselves. What Burke, however, missed, is that most of humanity is *incapable* of appreciating the Sublime; anything too strange is just too strange.

And so we get The Parochial Sublime, the Sublime cut down to size by insisting on its "relevance", on how it "speaks to us", on what it teaches us. In other the Sublime devoid of everything that actually matters...

This is the mindset that has every documentary about biology telling us about medical applications, every documentary about physics telling us about new materials, every documentary about the ocean is about climate change and overfishing. It's the mindset that asks "will this be on the test", and that insists on identity history (because: why would you be interested in anything beyond yourself?) It's the mindset that simply cannot appreciate grandeur just as grandeur.

Unfortunately most documentaries, even those superficially Sublime, are actually Parochially Sublime; and this is no exception. It's not enough to glory in the gorgeousness of the images, to wallow in the strangeness of what's being presented; as usual the strangeness has to be waved away by insisting on how it can be mapped to the petty concerns of individual humans.

If the Parochial Sublime is your thing, go ahead, you'll love it.

If you prefer the Sublime, switch off the sound and just watch.