Customer Reviews

Dirt! The Movie

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I saw this film during Docuweeks in Los Angeles about a year ago. It inspired me beyond words, into action.

I found this film to have a broad range of views on varying topics having to do with dirt: natural building, tree planting, edible schoolyards (and after watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, I am convinced that EVERY school needs a garden program!), mountaintop removal, mycology, energy, food, water, farming, composting, gardening....

I have since seen this film NUMEROUS times and I highly recommend it. While it does touch on some serious topics, it is not a heavy documentary that requires a barf bag (thanks, Cove) or a prescription for Lexapro. It is informative, general, entertaining and inspiring. AND it has a great soundtrack from KCRW's highly acclaimed Tom Schnabel.

The movie is adapted from Bill Logan's essays collected under the title "Dirt: the Ecstatic Skin of the Earth." In three parts, it explains the miraculous nature of soil, illustrates humanity's mismanagement of soil, and shows some hopeful approaches to better management. The talking heads are varied and interesting, and the photography wonderful. I found the coverage of soil mismanagement a little difficult to follow, even though it's not new to me. I'm planning to show my copy to a youth group at our church and will have to pause it there and explain things. By the end the movie gets a little redundant but the cumulative impact is very good.

Dirt! The movie takes a look at the importance of dirt in sustaining human life. In this era where we think a lot about water, it is good to also be looking at our impact on dirt.

Dirt is the fabric of life and the quality of that dirt is reflected in us as human beings. We grow food in the soil and if it is depleted then so are we nutritionally speaking. It talks about the relationship of soil to our well being. I highly recommend watching it to see for yourself. People from all walks of life are featured in this video. Mother Earth provides well when she is nurtured and cared for by us the people who inhabit this planet Earth.

Take a walk in nature and compare that to the concrete jungle. Which do you prefer?

Wow. This documentary is really awesome!

It's a movie full of inspiration and hopeful insights to humanity.

Movies like this is going to help all of us see the light!

Often, I worry about the mother earth, what we are doing to it...I felt so helpless and hopeless.

How can one person help? What can I do to help mother Earth?

Against the destruction of corporate greed and carelessness of humanity.

Well, i think i found the answer.

This movie make you realize that, yes, you can make a difference!

I am going to wake up tomorrow and plant a tree, recycle, learn to garden, and tell all my friends to see this movie that can change our lifestyle for the better.

I will be that humming bird!

I thank you so much for bringing this brilliant creative work to life. You have made me change.

Dirt...is my new best friend.

;-)

This is one of my all time favorite documentaries, it is uplifting, beautiful, informative and moving. I have to confess that I cried at some point, but they were tears of appreciation and love for our beautiful Earth.

This film is truly a gem. It is an eye opener, a manifesto of love for our planet, a call to reconnect with dirt and where we come from.

Highly, highly recommended.

Note: this review was originally written for PRISM Magazine, published by Evangelicals for Social Action, and appears in the July/August 2011 issue.

There are all sorts of things you and I take for granted every day of our lives, but few are as basic or fundamental to our very existence as dirt. This is the basic premise of DIRT! The Movie, an 80-minute documentary film exploring the profound impact of soil on every sphere of society.

The film is narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis and features interviews with an Indian environmental activist, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, a wine connoisseur, an Austrian-born physicist, a professor of agroecology, and an array of others, all offering their unique perspectives on the irreplaceable significance of dirt in our lives.

To Christians, this should come as no surprise. In the second chapter of Genesis we read, "God formed Man out of dirt from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The Man came alive--a living soul!" (The Message); indeed, even the name Adam means "dust." Yet too often we consider this mere poetry, thinking of dirt and dust more as nuisances to be avoided rather than the elemental sources of life our Creator God intended them to be.

Given the long-standing indifference and neglect dirt has endured in the public mind, one might expect a documentary of this sort to be, well, dry. It's anything but. While the interviewees have impressive credentials on their own merits, the creators of the film went to great lengths -- at times rather goofily so -- to make the film accessible and interesting.

If DIRT! The Movie makes one core contribution to the environmental conversation, it is in highlighting the symbiotic relationship between people and the land. In doing so, it makes clear that for better or worse, even the smallest of actions on this finite planet have cosmic consequences.

"The earth is the Lord's," says the Psalmist, "and everything in it." Meditating on the truth of those words, with the arguments of DIRT! in mind, may help us as stewards to cultivate and value dirt for what it is, rather than treading it underfoot.

[...]

I understand that dirt is at the heart of all that we are. I thought I was too well informed to learn much from a "dirtumentary" but I was wrong. This little movie should be required as a part of every school's ciriculum.

Why? Because it spreads simplifications and generalisations, which only make people confused about a very important but complex subject, which deserves so much more: a balanced and erudite exploration of reality! Without emotional honky-tonky, without one-sidedness, and definitely without the sentiment of "oooooh, the soil is so holy, we must all worship the soil", on which this movie spends an awful lot of time, time better spent on analysing problems and exploring solutions. Admittingly, the movie does put the mark on some serious problems and takes a peek at a variety of interesting "solutions", albeit pretty small-scaled ones which are in no way an answer to the big problems we face - big problems for which there ARE improvements/solutions, but which this movie fails to explore. Bad things aside, this movie díd made me reflect on whether we should take good, living soil for granted: it's actually pretty amazing!

One thing that stands out in "Dirt" is the tunnel-demonisation of modern large-scale farming with its monocultures. The movie doesn't provide a balanced story, with all the arguments, all the sides, the good and the bad. What it does provide is a disservice to the difficult and complex reality of farming.

Some examples of how "Dirt: the movie" tends to generalise and simplify:

The movie opens and ends with this quote: "Of the billions of planets in all the galaxies of the known universe, only one has a living, breathing skin, called dirt". Actually, as far as I know, the present knowledge is more like this: we don't know if there is another planet with life/soil, and since we haven't been able to check a lot of those billions of planets, we do not know.

"As we walk through the landscape, not only are the birds aware, and the bears, and all the other animals of this forest: all the microbes in the soil are aware of our presence." Oh, please.

Throughout the movie there is a woman (smiling ALL the time, which would be admirable - instead of irritating - if it weren't in this movie) who sais head-in-the-cloud-things like: "We are made of the same five basic elements that the earth is made of." Then there is this guy who tastes soil and sais "With the amount of species living in a teaspoon of dirt, I think it is very obvious that dirt might be more alive than we are." I myself was taught that our bodies are as well full of life, with billions of bacteria and stuff. I'm just saying...

[Natural resources are used] "for the benefit of a very small number of people". Do the makers of this movie not have electricity? A home with furniture? Water? Food? Clothes? Transportation? This reeks of conspiracy theories (a small business elite rules the world!!), which is smellable throughout the movie.

"In India alone [they target that] 600 million famers should disappear in an industrial model of farming" They say that like it would be a bad thing... Moving away from an agriculture society to a service society is a consequence of economic growth, and vastly improves the lives of many. In the West, only a few percent of the population still works in agriculture. That's why many people can pursue lifes as doctors, engineers, scientists, teachers, writers, dancers, actors, photographers,... instead of destroying your back while farming like papa.

"Famers around the world are comitting suicide." So vague, so easily said, so easily pulled out of context.

"In India, over the last decade, an estimated 200 000 farmers have killed themselves; many, by drinking the pesticide they can no longer afford." There is indeed a problem with farmers who kill themselves in India, but this oversimplified and selfserving statement is shamefull. For a wider perspective (not one-liners that have LITTLE to do with REALITY), read e.g. the Wikipedia article on farmers' suicides in india.

We live in the 21st century, which is characterised by an enormous amount and availability of information. I find it somewhat strange that bad analysis, misleading "facts", out-of-contexters, etc. still get airplay like this. The world will be a better place when that changes. Facts, clarity and vision: that is what we need when analysing problems and solutions. Not the manure this movie brings to the table. I don't eat that ****. And neither should you.