Sumptuous nature cinematography but feeble polemic make this celebration of a conservation reverie hollow.
★★☆☆☆
Although its populace would rarely admit it, Britain can be beautiful. When the summer sun glazes arching reeds near a pond or rolling fields glimmer gold, the infamously grey landscape is transformed into the stuff of impressionist painters. This idyllic vision of Britain is front and centre in David Allen’s feature debut Wilding, now released on Blu-Ray by MetFilm. Like his conservationist subjects Isabella and Charlie Tree, Allen has the gobsmacking ability to compose the English landscape to look heavenly. But the reality of Britain’s decimated landscape and the political ignorance that sustains this is never breached in Wilding, which indulges a rather anodyne approach to a subject which demands vitality.
Farming is a hotbed for environmental debate, especially in the largely agricultural UK. This is what Charlie and Isabella Tree discovered upon making the decision to cease all farming operations on their acres in the early 2000s. Inspired by a radical Dutch conservationist—confessing in Wilding that his methods are contested—the Trees aimed to relinquish their arable land, the Knepp Estate, back to nature to boost biodiversity. The documentary retells and recreates, via infrequent and tepid reenactments, their journey against the odds to make Knepp rich with flora, fauna and animalia.
It’s a noble effort with breathtaking results. Gorgeous stallions, furry piglets swaddled by a hulking sow and storks in striking silhouette atop the Trees’ country manor make for rich eye candy in this documentary. Allen achieves a near-magical quality in his cinematography, with the wildlife appearing like untouched, storybook versions of reality’s over-farmed livestock. You’ll be looking for your nearest petting zoo as the credits roll.
That is precisely the issue. For a film about England’s dire biodiversity and the revolutionary conservationist efforts needed to rebuild it, it is frustratingly idyllic. The Knepp Estate is edenic, but Allen never probes beyond its hallowed boundaries into the heart of the problem itself. There is no mention of how Britain’s land is tarnished or the governing and industrial bodies which are responsible. Instead Allen pedestals Knepp as a perfumed cure-all for the crisis, with whiffs of the boundless optimism employed in greenwashing.
Dubious viewers will begin to concoct questions about the efficiency of Knepp and the privilege of the incredibly wealthy Tree family, all of which Allen buries in more beauty shots, over-egging a fantasy of natural abundance achieved by a bit of good old English elbow grease and a cup of tea. Watchers of The One Show will be at home. It’s a woefully optimistic effort which is dangerously oblivious to the multifarious limits of reality, even if on paper it’s an admittedly lovely thing to do. A Q&A featured on this disc with Isabella does answer some burning questions about Knepp, and addresses ways in which this extreme conservation practice could evolve past its upper-class gatekeepers. It’s a rare instance when the extras on the disc outshine the feature, as the breadth of the interview exceeds the documentary. But the whole film still feels behind, to the point where its adaptation from the literary source material feels questionable in the first place.
The Verdict
Wilding is not difficult to watch, nor is it malicious. It is, however, outdated, failing to meet the anger demonstrated in Just Stop Oil’s controversial protests or the brutality of Andrea Arnold’s dairy industry exposé Cow. Nothing is said beyond Wilding’s pornographic natural offerings; with the increasingly grim, annual environmental development of Earth, who can blame Allen for indulging in naivety? Hope is important after all. But it must be energised and complemented with pragmatism and anger, taken to those responsible with a burning torch, not a mug of tea.
Words by Barney Nuttall
Wilding is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
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