Force of Nature

At the age of 75, Canadian scientist, environmental activist, and broadcaster David Suzuki returns to the University of British Columbia to deliver his last lecture, or as he put it, "what I want to say before I die." The capacity crowd gives him a rock star's welcome, but when he begins to speak, you sense that you are about to hear a life-changing oration. Suzuki develops a breathtaking, utterly convincing argument about the need to rethink our relationship with the natural world. As the speech unfolds, director Sturla Gunnarson expertly weaves in biographical scenes and interviews with the soft-spoken scientist so seamlessly that man and message become one. Suzuki’s childhood years in a Japanese internment camp during World War II, his teenage passion for fishing and mucking about in swamps, his early disillusionment with much scientific progress (its propensity to destroy nature), his visit to a Hiroshima memorial, all echo one of the main scientific tenets of his speech - that all living beings are connected to one another. It is a tour de force.