Lifepulse: A Natural Thriller

Filmed by the BBC's Natural History Unit, Lifepulse is an incredible nature documentary that eschews the standard show-animal-talk-about-animal format in favor of a more sensual experience. Minimally narrated by Richard Crenna (who uses quotes from Loren Eiseley and Aldo Leopold), and featuring a wonderful soundtrack by The Startled Insects, Lifepulse is more like a waking dream with music than a zoology lesson. The film begins where life began ...in the water. Here the denizens of the deep engage in a life and death struggle. A moray eel tracks a swimming blowfish, and then swiftly strikes. The blowfish expands its outer membrane, making it impossible for the eel to drag its prey into its underwater cave. The blowfish escapes, sighing back to normal shape, and we do the same. Lifepulse is as good as its subtitle; during many portions of the film we sit on the edges of our seats holding our breath. When a bat descends on a frog croaking in a pond, the camera angles and editing shifts bear the earmarks of a taut thriller, and more than just survival of the fittest, we sense a palpable evil in the demonic creature's furry flight. Condors soar, monkeys dance, hummingbirds court flowers, and prairie dogs stand upright and scope out their known universe in nervous anticipation. If Lifepulse conclusively underscores the fact that nature is red in tooth and claw, it also reveals the stupendous beauty that often lies just beyond the edges of our perception. Near the close, the narrator says: "Up out of the ancient well fins are still scrambling towards sunlight. There are other things brewing and growing in the oceanic vat. It pays to know this. It pays to know that there is just as much future as there is past. The only thing that doesn't pay is to be sure of man's own part in it." After what's gone before, we are sufficiently humbled to heed these words of wisdom, and look at our place in the world anew. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (Available from most distributors.)