Our Take
Robert Macfarlane's Underland is one of the great works of nature writing of the last decade — a book about the world beneath our feet that is, at its heart, about time, memory, and what we leave behind. Director Robert Petit spent five years making this adaptation, and his formal conceit is extraordinary: the camera descends through a cleft in an old ash tree at the film's opening and does not resurface until its final moments. There are no talking heads, no birdsong, no daylight. Three stories braid together — an urban explorer in Las Vegas's storm drains, a Maya woman diving into the caves of the Yucatán, a dark matter physicist working miles beneath the surface of Canada — all narrated by Sandra Hüller, with a score by Hannah Peel that was used in Game of Thrones. Darren Aronofsky produces. Macfarlane himself collaborated on the script and gave the film his blessing unreservedly, calling it an act of "quantum collaboration." It is in limited release now. If it's playing near you, go.
