“Humboldt USA” is a visually majestic portrait of various Americans trying to save what is left of nature and wildlife which uses places named after the 19th century father of ecology as an organizing framework. It will screen May 2 at the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look festival. Go here for showtimes and tickets.
Alexander von Humboldt was one of the most important scientists of the 19th century. More species have been named after him than any other human. The German polymath (check out the long wikipedia bio of him) is considered the father of ecology and many places in the United States are named after him.
The only one I had heard of before seeing this documentary is the Humboldt Redwoods forest. (I have a good friend who lives near it. I also remember the scene in “Vertigo” where Kim Novak plots her life history on a cross section of a redwood tree.) We’re shown a couple who use multiple GoPro cameras to create stunning 3D images of part of the forest. A TikTok naturalist makes videos of the forest for children. We learn that the trees in the Humboldt Redwoods forest represent only 4.6% of what was once there!
Meanwhile, in Humboldt County in Nevada, wildlife workers capture endangered longhorn sheep from mountains and release them in a reservation where they hope they’ll have a better chance of growing their population. A nearby Scheels sporting goods store is so huge it has a ferris wheel and statues of former presidents with recordings of their speeches.
In Buffalo, New York, Humboldt Parkway resident Terry Robinson and his scientist wife install sensors as part of a collective group measuring the air and noise pollution in a city whose residents make 70,000 car trips a day on an eight-lane highway that used to be park land. The Department of Transportation propose a $1 billion project to cover the highway with a roof covered by green space. Terry and others resist, saying that it will just create more toxic pollution in the tunnel it creates. (“Just fill it in!” Terry insists.) At a public hearing New York Governor Kathy Hochul refers to the project as having just a few “naysayers.”
“Everything is interconnectedness,” Humboldt once wrote and the film is a powerful examination of how humans have become disconnected with nature. Time lapse footage of traffic on the Humboldt Parkway is paired with audio from a solar eclipse viewed in Buffalo to suggest our eerie fascination with the wrong phenomena.
The cinematography by director G. Anthony Svatek and Sean Hanley is breathtaking as is also the sound design by Kaiija Siirala. The narration is the only weak element of the documentary. It’s a bit sentimental, fawning and even partly misleading about the life of Humboldt. (He didn’t clam up when meeting Thomas Jefferson. Humboldt may have been gay or he may have been asexual–there is no consensus about it.) The film would be better without it. Even so this is a must-see film for anyone (and it ought to be every one of us) who love and want to protect nature.