at Haida Gwaii, Force of Nature, dir. Sturla Gunnarsson (2010)

4 POINT OF VIEW 79 | FALL 2010 Docs & Indies: the new fall line

Is David Suzuki a Force of Nature? Moving between a Canadian icon’s “legacy lecture” and revelations from his personal life, director Sturla Gunnarsson creates an indelible portrait

here’s a reason that Neil Young’s Canada award-winning Air India 182, was initially 1990 song “Mother Earth” carries the approached by producer Laszlo Barna with the subtitle “Natural Anthem.” Its terse, cor- idea to make a movie about Suzuki. “When we Tuscating opening chords are more than a little spoke about the film, [David] didn’t see himself as reminiscent of “The Star Spangled Banner.” In a subject,” says Gunnarsson. “He imagined some- lieu of bombs bursting in air, Young envisions a thing that would take his theories and present “ball of fire in the summer sky” possessed of a them cinematically. But what I saw was a guy who “healing light.” In a voice rendered almost meek was 75 years old and at a very particular point in by the ragged glory of the surrounding guitar his life, dealing with his own mortality, and real- work, the singer asks the Earth, “how long can izing that he wasn’t going to be around forever.” you give and not receive?” It is a question tinged Reached via telephone at his offices in with equal measures of humility and righteous , Suzuki is hesitant to talk about the indignation. film in such personal terms. He says, in fact, that This majestic track serves as the herald for he’s always been confused by society’s desire to Sturla Gunnarsson’s Force of Nature, a docu- know more about public figures (which didn’t mentary about and featuring David Suzuki. It’s preclude him from writing an autobiography). He a fitting transition from one Canadian icon to will confirm that he was tantalized by the poten- another. First glimpsed in his dressing room in tial of putting his big-picture ideas into a wide- the moments before delivering a “legacy address” screen format. “I’ve always been very impressed at the University of British Columbia, the with the difference in impact between a feature 75-year-old environmentalist, scientist and CBC film and television,” says Suzuki. “When an audi- prime-time icon might be an ence member is at home, he aged prizefighter facing his By A d a m N ay m a n might be distracted—he has reflection in anticipation of to go to the bathroom, have a a final bout. “It kind of feels like this is a wrap beer, put the kids to bed. He’s not watching in a of what I’ve been doing,” he says, addressing the fully focused, concentrated way. Whereas some- camera. “It really is a nice completion.” A pause, one who pays 10 bucks and goes to sit in a theatre and then a sideways smile. “I guess I can go home for 90 minutes has a very different relationship to and die now.” what he’s watching.” The joke is an attempt at self-deprecation but Cleanly photographed by Tony Westman it hints at a stickier sentiment. Force of Nature is and edited by the stalwart Nick Hector, Force of devoted to showcasing Suzuki’s continued vital- Nature holds audience attention without forc- ity as a thinker and speaker, but this seemingly ing it. The “legacy lecture” is more than just a offhanded jest hangs over the film like a shroud. framing device that allows for some gorgeous “He was at a point in his life where he was trying aerial nighttime shots of Vancouver and the UBC to distill it all,” says Gunnarsson in an exclusive campus. It gives the film its spine. Approximately interview conducted just days after the conclu- half of the film’s running time is devoted (non- sion of the editing process. The director, whose consecutively) to Suzuki’s oration, which unfolds

ARI GUNNARSSON last documentary was the 2009 Directors Guild of in front of a sold-out audience and is backed

FALL 2010 | POINT OF VIEW 79 5 by an evocative stream of video images space—is to simultaneously appreciate the by the intersection of national and per- that transform the stage space into what man’s storytelling abilities while shivering sonal history, revealing that he was ostra- Gunnarsson calls “a memory box.” “We at his conclusions. cized as a child by the other Japanese kids didn’t want the images to be illustrative, To be perfectly honest, a few of Suzuki’s at the camp. Because Suzuki’s family was like in An Inconvenient Truth,” says the rhetorical gambits ring hollow, like when he Canadian, he could not speak their native director, as if anticipating the inevitable tries to emphasize the difference between language fluently, and thus found him- series of comparisons between his film the physical world and human society by self stranded between two cliques—one and Davis Guggenheim’s 2006 Oscar win- reducing the world economy to nothing Japanese, one Caucasian—neither of which ner, which of course also featured a very more than a phantom. It’s a provocative wanted anything to do with him. famous person speaking in public about but simplistic formulation that doesn’t so Suzuki’s willingness to open up about his environmental issues. “We wanted [our much address the devastating complexi- past is admirable—and it apparently didn’t images] to be emotional and expressive.” ties of globalized exchange as shunt them come all that easily. “The big fear going in The projections are indeed quite lovely, expediently off to the side. Still, the basic was that we were just doing The Nature though with all respect to Gunnarsson and argument remains persuasive and scarily of Things: Bigger, Longer and Uncut,” says his technical collaborations, the visuals plausible: we’re using up our resources at Gunnarsson. “[This] really was the num- might only really be noticeable on a second a rate faster than the planet can replen- ber one challenge. We all like to stay in viewing. Chances are that most viewers ish them. While he’s presented these ideas our comfort zones—that’s why they’re our will be too caught up in Suzuki’s words to before in many different forums, Suzuki comfort zones. And I think it took David really notice the pictures behind him. If credits Gunnarsson for helping him to a little while to get used to the fact that Suzuki really did feel that this lecture was keep his discourse on track. “[Sturla] was he was the subject of the film, and not the as much the creator of the talk author. I noticed that during our interviews as I was,” says Suzuki. “I was he would go from talking to me to talking Director Sturla Gunnarsson putting down favourite lines to the camera, so we had to find ways to get from other speeches, and try- around that, like asking the same questions ing to cover everything at once. over and over in a different context.” Sturla kept reminding me that I To the director’s credit, he managed to only had an hour, and he really circumvent this problem without resort- helped me to shape the mate- ing to pounding his subject. When Suzuki rial and hone it down.” does show emotion—whether it’s about the Gunnarsson is wary about difficult irony of his having apprenticed taking too much credit for his at a facility in Tennessee that had previ- subject’s presentation, but he ously been instrumental in the develop- describes the process in very ment of the Manhattan Project or the slow similar terms. “David is a racon- dissolution of his first marriage due to his teur,” he says. “He can burrow overwhelming work commitments—it feels into subjects, digress, and then natural rather than manufactured. During WENDY ORD WENDY return to the first idea quite an interview shot at a bar in Oakridge, brilliantly. In a film, though, the Suzuki talks about responding to the rac- spine needs to be very strong ism he felt swimming around him in that and precise. So I was thinking lily-white community by becoming a rac- his last kick at the can, he chose to go down in terms of the overall filmic weave. I knew ist himself. “I hated white people,” he swinging. The speech addresses a host of where all of the beats were. The speech had says flatly, and the moment feels remark- early-21st-century realities, casting a glance to work as a speech, of course, but knowing ably unguarded—especially considering back at the modernist upheavals of the pre- certain things about the rest of the produc- Suzuki’s famously telegenic persona. vious 100 years, including the creation of tion, we were able to make it work in other It’s interesting to note that Suzuki’s the atomic bomb. It also has one eye on a ways, too.” career on The Nature of Things gets rela- future that he feels may be rapidly reced- The “weave” that Gunnarsson describes tively short shrift. There’s almost as much ing. In his best moments, Suzuki strikes the is the material arranged around the lec- archival footage of a shaggy-looking Suzuki balance between layman-friendly accessi- ture footage, which intends to both supple- skateboarding through the halls of UBC bility and soft-spoken scientific authority ment and transcend the portrait of Suzuki with his students in the early 1970s as there that he has cultivated for more than 40 as a public figure. Gunnarsson begins the are clips of the program proper (though years as a TV presenter on The Nature of journey in a Tokyo barbershop, as Suzuki a landmark Nature of Things piece on a Things. His is a unique ability, resistant unravels his childhood recollections of logging standoff in British Columbia is to charges of pedantry on the one hand “the summer that [he] was disgraced.” The gone over in detail). One of the film’s more and averse to accusations of dumbed-down disgrace, though, was really Canada’s: in pointed compositions places Suzuki in a compromise on the other. To hear Suzuki the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the War playback monitor as he rehearses promos discuss the erosion of natural resources Measures Act paved the way for the for a new season of The Nature of Things, via the analogy of a test-tube crowded with internment of a generation of Japanese- going through the paces of network brand bacteria—with one of the little buggers say- Canadians, including Suzuki’s own fam- extension with something less than enthu- ing, “Guys, I think we’ve got a population ily. Exploring the grounds of the Nikkei siasm. This is followed by a quick chat seg- problem here,” as exponential popula- Internment Memorial in Slocan Valley, ment against the recognizable backdrop of tion growth takes its toll on the available British Columbia, Suzuki is overwhelmed CBC headquarters in , with Suzuki

6 POINT OF VIEW 79 | FALL 2010 bemoaning the short-attention-span nature of contemporary television. “You don’t David Suzuki at Beatrice Lake, have time for profundity or to develop a Force of Nature, dir. Sturla Gunnarsson (2010) thought...it’s just jolts per minute to carry it across,” he says, in plain view of his bosses’ offices. Gunnarsson cinches the joke by remarking from behind the camera that he’s going to indulge in a few seconds of dead air, just to bring the pace down. “That was the one thing people didn’t get,” laughs Gunnarsson. “They thought it was a mistake that had been left in the film, which was the point.” All joking aside, however, Suzuki is more than willing to reiterate the point. “I was just on a panel in Banff talking about how to ‘green’ televi- sion,” he says. “I was very negative. I said that TV is in large part the problem. Our kids are watching too much television, too many games, too many screens. We need them to turn those damn things off and get them outside. We have a problem: Nature Deficit Disorder. If you’re not attuned to nature, you don’t care what happens to it.” Certainly Suzuki’s childhood experiences exploring—and gently raiding—the swamps ARI GUNNARSSON around his home (which he rather cheekily him was that he was following this idea of have a sanguine quality that at once recalls reveals were the byproduct of not being the numinous but approaching it through and relieves the gallows humour of the able to score any dates with girls) informed science...I was studying William Blake, and opening dressing-room one-liner: they’re his later forays into biology. he was talking about seeing eternity in a evidence that a man ever-restless in spite Gunnarsson isn’t willing to write off the grain of sand. And in the last 30 years, a lot of his success has found peace even as he’s tube as a tool for potential good, balancing of what he was saying has become accepted taken up residence in what he calls “the his film’s implicit critique of the contempo- as conventional wisdom. death zone.” And they also mesh with the rary TV landscape against some more opti- “He’s been very consistent in his philo- closing passages of the lecture, in which the mistic ideas. “We’ve had 50 years of science sophical and ethical outlook all that time. dark, apocalypse-now theorizing gives way programming in prime time in Canada,” So I was curious to know: is he rigid and to a plangent call for change that admits the he says, “which may have played a role as inflexible, or is he just a more highly possibility—and sustaining need—for hope. to why we have a different relationship to evolved thinker than I am? It’s a little bit of “I’m enough of a realist to see where the the environment than people in the United both, maybe. I can say, though, that making curve is taking us, which is over the edge States. You have to ‘get them young,’ like this film made me a less cynical person.” of a big cliff,” says Suzuki, echoing and the Church says. It instills certain values. For his part, Suzuki still sounds plenty expanding upon the words he says in the If you take away the last few years, when cynical, at least when discussing those who film. “But if we can find a way to activate I think Canada has been willfully entering would seek to publically discredit the envi- the breaks, perhaps nature will be more into the age of stupid, Canadians have his- ronmental movement he’s helped to shape forgiving than we were. All I can say is that torically been tuned to environmentalism. both as a TV front man and test-tube tin- it is looking grim, but we don’t know with Greenpeace was born here. At base, there’s kerer. Force of Nature was filmed before absolute certainty that it’s too late, so we a more respectful relationship to the natu- the BP oil spill, but Suzuki says that ana- have to operate on hope. It’s not a very big ral world than in some other industrialized lyzing the fallout is instructive. “When the life raft to hold on to, but it’s the only thing countries.” gulf accident happened, why didn’t the oil that will keep us going.” This idea of respect—the wary, hum- industry respond by just saying ‘Hey, we “I think of David as a guy who offers ble kind afforded to entities possessed of really screwed up, it’s our fault, and what hope in the face of the evidence,” says great destructive power—is at the heart of can we do?’ he asks in the indignant tones Gunnarsson. “Nobody knows better than Suzuki’s message. It’s a potential criticism of somebody who doesn’t expect a satisfac- he does about how fucked we are, but in of Force of Nature that it allows him to pres- tory answer. “Instead, it’s all about shout- spite of it, he still approaches the natural ent that message without any intimations ing down the science and keeping people world with a sense of mystery and awe. And of dissent, but Gunnarsson has no problem off of the company’s back.” ultimately, I think that he believes that it is reconciling his admiration for Suzuki with This is not an optimistic assessment. in that same mystery and awe that we will his imperatives as a documentary film- And yet Force of Nature is not entirely a find our salvation.” POV maker. “I was at UBC when David was despairing film. The images of Suzuki in teaching there. He was a rock star professor repose with his children and their families, Adam Nayman is a film critic in Toronto. and a very radical figure. When I look back or making a solitary pilgrimage to a spot He writes for Eye Weekly, Montage, Cinema at that time, what really attracted me to he’d previously visited with his late father, Scope and The Walrus.

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