The word “career” is certainly too small for what Michelle and Barack Obama have been doing during the day since they weren’t first couple are more. Since both of them no longer run the rose garden of the White House, but go back to their private lives. If you got that right – this is just the latest news – the Obamas have just resigned from Spotify because the reach of the giant platform is not enough for them. Few do it so wonderfully colorful.
What is also amazing about the super career of this world couple is that you can hardly ever be jealous of them. The Obamas collect millions upon every corner for another book or another podcast, they are elitist far beyond the borders of their private beach. But somehow they always get the curve, Barack Obama is particularly impressive again in his latest project, a five-part nature park documentary for Netflix.
At the beginning of this documentary, Obama walks barefoot along the beach and immediately lulls you in with stories from his life. A little later, the former world’s most powerful man says that we are all “not powerless” in the fight against climate change and environmental destruction. You want to be angry for a moment and bark at him: You can think of that NOW?
“Our wonderful national parks” operates a lot with recordings from drones. As a gaffer, you don’t want to be a nuisance on site.
(Photo: Netflix)
But it is true that Obama protected 220 million hectares of US land through the Antiquities Act during his term in office, more than any president before him. It is also true that Obama could now use his face recognition and his voice for other things than providing information about moss carpets and Japanese cedars on pay-TV on the Internet.
Speaking of voice. Roughly the entire American Internet melted this week because of the snuggly blanket-like way in which Obama captions these films, precisely and with that very own frugality that one only knows from nature documentaries and perhaps from the commentary on selected fringe sports. When a lemur monkey flies around between a dizzyingly high, sharp stone in a mixture of parkour and spontaneous spidermanism, Obama says only this from the off: “A single misstep could prove fatal”. It doesn’t get any better than that.
With that well-known voice of ASRM, it travels from Western Patagonia to Yellowstone Park and Cahills Crossing in Australia’s Northern Territory, where the merry river journey of some mullets ends abruptly and brutally in the snap-snapping snap-mouth of a local crocodile.
Looks like a textbook illustration, but it’s one of the thousands of powerful images produced over 1,500 days of shooting.
(Photo: Netflix)
Obama is not the only reason why this becomes a spectacle that goes beyond the usual measure of nature documentaries. It gets it through the effort that went into making the films, through the narrative power of the direction, and through a balance of fun and fright. A crew, which was also reinforced with specialists on site, managed to bring in plenty of material over 1500 days of shooting, including some that was extremely rare. And all of this is mixed, in which the maximum beauty of this earth comes into its own – without omitting the threat posed by humans and man-made climate change.
So the three-fingered sloth is completely on the ropes, who doesn’t know that
The narrative power grows from the combination of the vocal miracle Barack Obama with the selection of his “protagonists”. In a light summer shirt and with very light Dad jokeattitude, he becomes a good-natured and good-humoured reserve and tour guide in the national parks of this world.
When Obama greets a sifaka from the ceiling after a brief pause, “Ceiling’s Shifaka,” it still sounds as if he had spoken the name of a friendly head of state in a state of the nation address. When hippos surf in salt water because it makes them feel lighter because of the higher density, or when Obama happily starts to lecture about the white-throated sloth, you immediately want to sign up for a wildlife sponsorship.
An attraction itself: Obama taking a selfie during production.
(Photo: Pete Souza/Netflix)
Preferably directly for exactly the three-toed sloth from the Manuel Antonio National Park in Costa Rica. It’s a speed limit-turned-animal and the world’s slowest-metabolizing mammal. It’s completely hanging on the ropes, who doesn’t know that. And while in the case of cougar hunting scenes and crocodile squadrons in the subtitles, the nice performance note “[dramatic music continues]” is to be read, this sloth doesn’t really need any accompaniment. It just sits there – and looks into the sun.
It’s almost as if the sloth has understood far more about life than most of those who visit national parks only occasionally instead of being permanently at home there.
“Our wonderful national parks“on Netflix.
You can find more series recommendations here.