Our Planet, The People, My Blood – Review

Release Date – TBC, Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 24 minutes, Director – Daniel Everitt-Lock

Documentary looking at the environmental and human impact of nuclear weapons testing, and the campaigns for recognition for those who have been affected by it.

There’s a good deal of footage put into the 84-minute run-time of Our Planet, The People, My Blood. From talking head interviews and news clips to old public safety reels, cartoons and historical footage there’s a lot put in to try and show the responses to nuclear weapons testing, and the effects that it’s had. The problem is, much of the weight there is comes from the interviews and the details we hear described rather than old images used to back them up, which the film could do with less of.

Starting out as a film about the environmental impacts of such testing, and how it’s affected the health of those who have been near to it across the world, it moves into showing the campaign made to MPs to recognise those whose lives were negatively changed by such tests and weapons. In these stories the film finds its biggest call. It feels most enthused and gives its biggest push to the sequence of events that focuses most on this.

There’s still a push to the details building up to this, looking at the personal affects and losses that the subject matter has caused individuals and their families, there’s interest and a sympathetic emotion from the documentary towards those displayed by the people featured in it. Certainly, getting a number of perspectives from around the world helps it along, and covers different views and impacts. It just feels that occasionally they can get somewhat overpowered by the images that are placed over them. Every now and then they work, but the more they’re used the less effective such inclusions become, especially when the effect on a landscape is being discussed, for example.

Luckily, the figures we see talking on screen and campaigning have a passion and drive that helps to see things through. Their stories and lives are the focus, and when the film properly gets this in gear it finds its stride and moves forward with a solid push to see it through.

While there might be a bit too much historical footage and images overpowering the words being said, when Our Planet puts the focus on those at the heart of the campaign and matters at hand there’s an interesting documentary with a handful of working pushes.