A great and distinguished life doesn’t necessarily make for a strong documentary feature. Sometimes, whether through the filmmaker’s lack of incisiveness or the subject’s unquantifiable nature, there simply isn’t a viable film to be made. With Force of Nature, a movie about the renowned Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki, it’s not easy to tell if the significant flaws lie in the suitability of Suzuki’s life or the failings of director Sturla Gunnarsson, but nonetheless the result is a pallid, underwhelming journey through what by expectations should have been a fascinating life and career.
As an academic, broadcaster and social advocate, Suzuki has been a prominent public figure, being one of the first advocates of environmental causes since the 1970s. He’s a revered figure in his homeland – the documentary is book ended by tracks from Canada’s most acclaimed musical acts: Neil Young and Arcade Fire – and the framing device for the narrative is a 'legacy lecture" Suzuki gave at the University of British Columbia to mark his 75th birthday.
Thousands rise to the feet in a standing ovation when he steps onto the stage, and the film effectively joins them, ceding control to the genial, polished public performer. Force of Nature, which visits old haunts and current sites of concern, allows Suzuki to tell his story without interruption or dialogue. He frames the narrative, and while that doesn’t mean he has anything to hide, there are simply too many times when Suzuki’s statements need a clarifying, or even challenging, question to bring out a fundamentally deeper vision of the man.
The staples of his life are fascinating: born to Japanese-Canadian parents (his late father chose the name David because his son would be surrounded by 'Caucasian Goliaths"), spending his childhood in a World War II interment camp, dealing with casual racism even as he built a career and became socially engaged. But the telling is sometimes glib, with Suzuki at one point, for example, admitting he has 'no memory" of providing domestic assistance to his first wife and their third children. He was obsessed with his fledgling career in genetics and after seven years of marriage his wife left him in 1965 (Suzuki remarried in 1972). A connection appears obvious, but is not pursued.
There’s virtually no voice heard apart from Suzuki’s, and the relationship between his views and social change aren’t explored. One piece of archival footage has him as a suited young man at the end of the 1950s, within a few years he’s a long-haired proto-hippie. That’s quite the transformation, and it may well be germane to his growing activism, yet it’s not considered applicable. Worryingly, there’s an air of unqualified hagiography to the documentary.
The other noticeable conflict is with the strength of Suzuki’s views at a place like a Tokyo fish market, where he describes the destructive fishing of blue fin tuna as an 'inter-generational crime" that will result in extinction, and the positive, broad outline of his framing speech that reaches for the inspirational but comes close to the specious. Like too much in Force of Nature, it lacks rigour.
