Sometime around 4 million years ago, a curious thing happened in the tropical deltas of Eastern Africa. Through a wondrous (and still largely mysterious) series of biological and behavioral changes, we became us--the species that evolved into modern humankind. Coincidence in Paradise attempts to trace the efforts of leading paleontologists and biologists to reconstruct and explain this evolutionary blockbuster from the evidence in the fossil record and close observation of our nearest zoological planetmates, chimps. The star of this show is Ardipithecus ramidus, the broad-skulled 4.4 million-year-old hominid remain found by UC Berkeley paleontologist Tim White and his team in Ethiopia in 1995--"not chimp, not human, something else." Absolutely riveting stuff--or at least it could have been in the hands of a more capable filmmaker--the video boasts indisputably fascinating segments: White and his fellow researchers are eloquent in discussing the daunting questions faced in studying proto-humans, and there's an absolutely spell-binding sequence in which anthropologist John Gurche brings the skull of one of ramidus' later relations to life with clay and prosthetic eyes. Unfortunately, filmmaker Matthias Von Gunten has made a rather sorry hash of this inherently enthralling topic through ill-conceived organization and scripting, and woefully inept editing. The result is a confusing, repetitive, and ultimately unsatisfying video, seemingly more concerned with dramatic impact than conveying complex issues and interesting information clearly. Particularly annoying is the filmmaker's decision to mix evolutionary hypotheses based on both paleontological and ethological evidence without making sufficient connections between the two (the sequences with Swiss biologist Christophe Boesch studying chimps in the wild don't really belong in this work at all). These shortcoming are lamentable: one has the feeling that somewhere in those 88 rambling minutes is an excellent 55 minute documentary yearning to tell it straight. Optional. Aud: C, P. (G. Handman)
Coincidence in Paradise
(1999) 88 min. $440. First Run/Icarus Films. PPR. Color cover. Vol. 15, Issue 5
Coincidence in Paradise
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