|
Great Journeys
Travelling can be amazing. I’ve ventured overseas a few times, been to
some vastly different and wildly interesting places, and each and every
time I feel thoroughly enriched by the experience of immersing myself in
a fully formed, intricately detailed part of the world that I barely
knew existed. If I wanted to convince someone to go travelling, that’s
how I would sell it to them: as a full body, full mind, expansive and
thorough experience.
Clearly, the filmmakers of Great Journeys disagree. The style of
both features in this double-header is relentless, rapid-fire, MTV-style
editing. It’s a forest - it’s a train - it’s a mountain - it’s a guy
laughing - it’s a tree - it’s a forest - and that’s Papua New Guinea,
apparently. All done and dusted in less than 30 seconds containing shots
that never exceed more than two seconds. Time to move on to Alaska.
Snow! – mountains! – laughing! - furry creatures! - and now we’re off to
Kenya. In all fairness, I can’t accuse the filmmakers of being
out-of-touch. We’re practically conditioned to consume information in
tiny, bite-sized chunks. Well, bravo, Globe Trekker Travel Collection;
you’ve certainly hit that nail on the head.
What this adds up to is fairly nice, but ultimately shallow, background
television. It’s not entirely unpleasant to glance over occasionally and
see a couple of seconds of footage of an exciting vista, and then glance
over ten seconds later and see something completely different. But for
those of you who are interested in coherent, thematically driven
documentaries, you will need to look elsewhere. It’s difficult to
discern a point or a dominant message; at least a message other than
“The world has some cool stuff in it and we can take good footage of
it.” Which reminds me: some of the footage is actually rather stunning,
which partially makes up for the fact that the presenters are not as
funny as they think they are.
The first episode - Planes, Trains & Automobiles - does what it
says on the tin. It’s about various ways of getting around, and getting
into, some fairly interesting and exotic locations. I can’t deny that
some of these modes of transportation are fun to learn about, but this
documentary doesn’t give you any hope of finding out if the destinations
themselves are actually worth visiting.
The second episode - Road Warriors - is much the same, only this
time we get a stronger emphasis on bikes and cars. Reader, I know that
you have things to do and places to be, so I daren’t steal more of your
time than is required. To that end, all you need to know is that both
episodes are cut from the very same cloth, and that this DVD is
effectively an extended, filmic travel brochure. Sometimes you need
something like that; an easy-on-the-brain break from more heady
entertainment. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you could certainly
do worse than this collection. Damning with faint praise? Perhaps. But
I’m trying to be polite. After all, a change is as good as a holiday. |
