Tribeca: “Underland” Leads Us Underground to New Beauty
They say that art imitates life, but maybe it’s the other way around. Life forces art to exist. Art allows for a deeper exploration of the self and the world that exists beneath our feet. It’s this hidden world that’s at the center of the Tribeca-premiering documentary Underland. Humanity exists on the Earth’s surface, but there’s something deeper, something below us, that we have not yet begun to comprehend. Underland is a strikingly lyrical reflection on the world below us and the tantalizing call that sends humans underground.
Underland is not your typical talking-head documentary. The film follows three different explorers as they venture into sites rarely visited by other humans. One is an urban explorer who traverses sewers to see what has been left behind and forgotten. Another is an archeologist exploring the cenotes in the Yucatan in an attempt to better understand the lives of her Mayan ancestors. The last is a scientist working in the underground SNOLAB facility who is at the forefront of the study of dark matter. What they all have in common is a desire to see the world from below as they attempt to make better sense of it from above.
courtesy of Tribeca
In an ironic turn of events, the day I sat down to write this review was Father’s Day. I called my dad and asked how he was spending the day. His response? He’s going on a tour through an underground mine in West Virginia. The same unknowing darkness that called to the subjects in Underland is calling to my father. It called to my mom’s father, too, who spent his life in and out of coal mines. You could say it called to my grandfather out of necessity because he grew up in a time when coal was king, but that doesn’t explain my father. He has no roots in Appalachia, a New Jersey boy from the suburbs, but when given the day to do with as he pleases, he heads underground. To see what lies beneath.
Isn’t that what we’re all searching for? Whether it be underground or within ourselves, we’re looking for what’s under the surface. We’re looking for the thing that breaks through to a depth we didn’t know was possible. That’s why all these "astronauts of the underworld" venture to the difficult-to-reach places featured in Underland. They’re looking for answers from our past, present, and future to make sense of as much as they can. That is what calls us down below. It’s what calls us everywhere and anywhere. As mystical and magical as Underland presents its new world, there’s still the feeling that we ‘ve only gone there in the hope of gaining something we didn’t have before. As complicated and complex as the world appears in the darkest pits, Underland knows it’s something inherently simple and human that leads us there.
Underland is a staggering piece of documentary work. The film offers stunning images of the “upperland” we’re familiar with and of the secrets of the world below. We see organisms grow, tree roots stretch to impossible heights, and humans make a life in a place the sun doesn’t reach. It is, as one of the film’s subjects calls it, “the beckoning void.” As frightening as it may be to stare into a pit of darkness, there’s also something thrilling about being the light that enters the space. Underland is about the mysteries of life, the pursuit of answers, and the vastness of humanity’s sense of exploration.
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