DVD Review: Echo and Other Elephants
Written by Jordan Richardson
Published April 22, 2008
With Echo and Other Elephants, BBC Video has compiled yet another brilliant series of natural history programs. Much like David Attenborough Wildlife Specials, Echo and Other Elephants is a DVD set that contains astonishing and often startling footage and world-renowned documentary content. This two-disc set contains around 362 minutes of marvelous elephant footage, running the gamut of life in the wild for African elephant Echo and her herd.
The DVD features researcher Cynthia Moss as she follows the matriarch Echo and her herd through Kenya’s Amboseli National Park. Moss worked with echo for over 30 years and the footage compiled fills three documentaries, all of which are featured on the DVD. BBC Video has added an additional five documentaries featuring other elephants, each one packed with incredible visuals as well.
It is the extraordinary documentaries with Echo that form the focal point of this set, however. Beginning with the phenomenal birth of Eli and following the young elephant through his struggles to stand upright and feed himself correctly, the viewer is instantly conscious of the concern with which Moss views these animals. She knows them personally and, together with alternating narration of David Attenborough, she shares her acquaintance of the herd.
There are affectionate moments of birth, peculiar but emotional mating rituals, and exciting battle sequences between male combatants. Each aspect of the lives of elephants is explored with meticulousness and sharp detail.
As well as the three documentaries featuring Echo, the DVD set includes a look at the elephants in the Namib Desert and four documentaries featuring narration by Saba Douglas-Hamilton, who lived with the elephants in the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya.
Douglas-Hamilton is an interesting figure, as we are introduced to her lifestyle in the documentary “Living with Elephants.” She is considered by some to be the “new David Attenborough” and has been accused of dumbing things down for a broader audience. Regardless of this rather hollow analysis, Douglas-Hamilton is a welcome narrator and her energy for the subject matter helps draw things closer to home.
Overall, Echo and Other Elephants is a must-have collection for lovers of great nature footage. Elephants are covered with such zeal and care within these eight documentaries that it’s hard not to become completely absorbed in the material. The documentaries about Echo are indeed the best of the bunch and the footage featuring Moss and the elephants is amazing, but the other pieces on the set are also well worth a look.
As a final caution, the DVD’s sound is incredible and really brings the bellows, roars, and noises of the elephants in their various stages of life stampeding into the living room. Speaker-rumbling sounds are common, as the mating battles and expressive reunions of Echo and Other Elephants take place. Proceed with caution, but don’t be afraid to take on this stunning collection.
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/04/22/221147.php
(DVD available on Amazon.com)
