'Onze Natuur' is an interesting piece of Belgian cinema: an ambitious attempt at creating a nature documentary in the vein of big international productions like Planet Earth and Our Planet, using only footage of our local flora and fauna.
The film certainly boasts a superb cinematography that delivers some stunning (and surprising) images of our nature. But there are some annoyances, that for me prevent it from being an unqualified success.
While I understand that the addition of a voice-over might have been necessary to reach a larger audience, the narration here was just way too saccharine for my taste. Not to mention the abrupt switch to a preachy closing statement that hits you over the head with the film's 'Big Message'. Also, I found the filmmakers' choice of Matteo Simoni as the narrator an odd one. He might be very popular as an actor, but he doesn't exactly prove himself to be the Belgian David Attenborough here. His pronunciation is less than impeccable, and his voice doesn't really have the 'gravitas' that the material requires.
Because of these grievances with the voice-over, I kept thinking that this experiment would have been even more interesting had they decided to make this a documentary in the style of Ron Fricke (Chronos, Baraka, Samsara). Those films famously do not employ any narration, allowing their wealth of striking images to speak for themselves. That way the viewer is allowed to make his own observations, form thematic connections, and look for meaning behind all the overwhelming beauty (and sometimes ugliness). Rather than having them spelled out to the audience, the themes and ideas of those films come through organically, which in turn makes them have a more lasting effect.
With a little more confidence in that strictly visual style of storytelling, this might perhaps have been a transcendent work of art. As it stands, 'Onze Natuur' is still an ambitious and visually groundbreaking project for Belgian cinema, just not the cinematic masterpiece I was longing for it to be.