Reviews

GOUD is an interesting film since it gives a review on the ongoing group-process within a female hockey team in general and more specific on the personal development of their coach.

I think Niek Koppen had especially great fun in editing it. Some intelligent jokes on the lifestyle of the hockey ladies and the culture they represent can be found. It made me wonder what influence the presence of the camera had on the individuals: would they act the same way if there was NO film-crew watching over their shoulders? Personally it was that representation of a subculture I found very interesting.

Moreover, through the film it is as if we watch a screenplay that could have been written for a fiction movie (even with some clichés in it!). Applause to that!

Yet GOUD is not the best Dutch documentary I have ever seen. It will absolutely teach you nothing what-so-ever about hockey and if you don't speak the professional language used in that world, the film will be a negative statement towards the intelligence of these hockey ladies.

But, in the end, a statement is a statement and a documentary can not go without one (and perhaps you might even agree with it!) My conclusion: watch this documentary, I am sure you'll enjoy (parts of) it. I did.

I loved the way EARTH is made. Its photography is unbelievable, editing it must have been an interesting challenge and Patrick Stewart's voice over is PERFECT. In addition its music and sound editing make watching EARTH a profound experience you don't want to miss. You really are on a journey to where you would probably never-ever end up by yourself.

And although, at first, I was quite surprised by the laughter of the audience as we see animals in their daily fight for survival, I could not help laughing myself sometimes. Nature simply seems too impressive to comprehend.

But, rather than the need to laugh, I left the cinema with a profound question:"Howcome 200 years of industrial revolution can destroy natural systems that have been here for thousands and thousands of years?"

With this question in mind, you'll understand how I felt somewhat bitter and powerless after seeing EARTH. I felt the immediate need to change the world, to help all these animals in their struggle, to undo the changes we have gone through the last centuries and to stop the global heating at once (all that not being a NGO activist at all!)...

So I immediately visited the website mentioned at the end of the film to see what I could do to save our -still- fantastic planet (and the polar bear) from its depressing fate... (www.loveearth.com)

I was a little disappointed to find no direct answers to my questions there. Yet it was very interesting to find out more about the film and the struggle its crew went through.

I hope that cutting on my energy-use will do. I don't know how else to shorten the distance polar bears have to swim to reach land before they drown or attack animals they cannot beat in their exhausted state...

An inspiring film it is, but I didn't leave the cinema feeling very happy.

The great thing about this film is that it has its total and very own style. It stays perfectly loyal to the time in what it is set. Even camera movement is adjusted to it: sudden zooms, hand-held camera work and nearly no music added. Acting performances are interesting and mostly convincing. Although this will help you through the film in an interesting way, it is not enough to make it a good film...

I have been looking for the conflict in this film and I have been looking for the central message of the director. They are there alright, but I have not experienced a single moment of being sucked into or swept out of the movie. I think it would be far more shocking to read actual facts about the girl to whom this happened for real, than to watch this fictive movie that misses its clue.