Good start, but then it gets ruined

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Blistering performances.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Just saw this movie and was throughly entranced and impressed. Its a French film (with English subtitles), taking an artistic view of creation and what it means to be human. But as another reviewer said, don't be mistaken for thinking it is another Discovery Channel show. The visuals are captivating, and perfectly reinforce the 'story', often in very innovative ways. A couple of fascinating ideas discussed: We are all products of the cosmos - literally made from atoms that were once stars, nebulae, and then rivers, trees, volcanoes. Once we pass on, our atoms will once again become those wonderful works of nature.We are not made of atoms. Atoms flow through us like water in a river, but our life is more like the river - directing the flow of matter. Defying the laws of entropy that pull us towards decay. This refers to the fact that much of the tissues in our body is replaced every few days/months/years. So we are in fact a different 'person' to ourselves even just a few years ago.

This is a documentary that covers from the Big Bang through the evolution and life cycles of complex animals. That alone wouldn't make Genesis very unique--there are tens of documentaries, most made for television, which cover all or some of the same material.However, one of the unique aspects of Genesis is that it features "narration" by Sotigui Kouyaté, a veteran West African actor. Kouyaté appears on camera often, in a part that seems halfway between a dramatic monologue and the traditional hosting of such documentaries, usually by academics of some stripe. The text that Kouyaté reads, which was written by directors Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou, is much more poetic and philosophical than the narration that normally accompanies this type of documentary. That has benefits, and Kouyaté tends to come across as a less manic human counterpart to The Lion King's (1994) Rafiki, but it also has problems if you read the film strictly as a documentary, as a lot of the scientific information and philosophical ideas are either incorrect or not very well thought out.However, when covering such a wide swathe of existence, you can hardly expect narration to bog down in fine-grained, sometimes controversial points, and as suggested by the Rafiki comparison, I think it's not quite right to read Genesis strictly as a documentary. Nuridsany and Pérennou shoot for and achieve a film that very effectively conveys an intuitive understanding of holistic or panentheistic philosophical and spiritual views and shows how well they can mesh with current scientific understanding.But aside from the above, and that is important and subtle material, what really gives Genesis an edge and what makes it crucial viewing to anyone with an interest in these kinds of documentaries is the fantastic cinematography. Other than another film from the same team, Microcosmos: Le peuple de l'herbe (1996), I don't think I've ever seen footage of animals shot as well as this, and I've only rarely seen footage of geology and inanimate objects shoot as well as this. The cinematography features amazing close-ups, crisp images, seamless time-lapse photography, impressive footage (you'll often wonder how they could have obtained some of these shots), and often-brilliant editing. At times the film resembles a collage of abstract artwork as much as a documentary, and the editing helps make the holistic/panentheistic view clear.Long sections of the film are narration-free. Instead, the cinematography is accompanied by music, so at times, Genesis almost resembles the Godfrey Reggio/Philip Glass film Anima Mundi (1992). At least at one point, the music actually sounds Glass-like. The only slightly distracting element of the soundtrack is that Nuridsany and Pérennou decided to add foley sound effects to many scenes. Occasionally they enhance the visuals, but sometimes they're overdone.

This effort by the team that brought us "Microcosmos" can't hold a candle to that film.While the visuals are attractive, they lack the originality and surprise that made "Microcosmos" the wonder that it is. In fact, there isn't a single substantial bit of footage in this film that isn't much like images one might see in nature documentaries from many other sources. These are woven together by a narrative that clearly wasn't written by the griot who tells the "story," but are instead words put into his mouth in a script written by others. The net effect of this leaves one all too often that one is watching stock footage that's been cobbled together.In the effort to describe everything and anything, this film sacrifices any depth whatsoever. We get, instead, an overly broad and utterly superficial ramble that comes off lacking any sincerity at all. The makers of "Genesis" would have done much better to have focused on one or two aspects of their overly-ambitious "story" rather than sacrificing the wonder and detail that gave "Microcosmos" its unique charm.The problem isn't that "Genesis" isn't like a Discovery Channel documentary. To the contrary, the problem is precisely that it IS so much like one, but it doesn't have as much depth. Aside from a few pretty pictures, "Genesis" is a disappointment.

This film boldly undertakes to tell the story of life from the Big Bang to the variety of species that we know today. And the history lesson becomes a fairy tale.Genesis asks that you leave aside everything you know about yourself, and think of your body as the substance that makes up the universe, your life as the energy that sparkled up the Big Bang, your projects as a shape, a limited space of organized chaos, resisting the deterioration of time.The film is breath-taking and captivating from the opening sequence to the last shot. Every image of the film is carefully selected and placed in a sequence: swirling dirt becomes a galaxy; rings of water float on the sound of the mating dance. The technological prowess of the filming is staggering, but does not surpass the ingenuity of the editing, and camera movements: shot in his apparent loneliness, the insect looks like a genius, solving obstacles one after the other. Human meaning is attached to all images shown, from the fish pretending to be daydreaming while baiting its prey, to the crawling crab signaling to a rival. The story of the earth is told by the reality of those jungles and tropical beaches, that we know so little about: swimming frogs start to hop; the giant tortoise becomes a dinosaur.If you think this is going to be some kind of Discovery Channel show, think again and surprise yourself.