“Gaia” is a trip. Literally. Magic mushrooms are involved. Pop a hallucinogenic substance and the world might look something like “Gaia,” where, in the Tsitsikamma forest in South Africa, a fungi of monumental proportions proliferates at night, gathering strength, threatening to take over the earth. Throw in a couple of wandering half-human half-mushroom creatures, and you’ve got yourself a trip and a half. Directed by Jaco Bouwer, “Gaia” has a lot to say about humanity’s destruction of the environment, about the “tipping point” we have collectively reached in the Anthropocene, but the film says it with creativity, mad flights of imagination, and even humor. “Gaia” does not feel like homework. It’s a thought-provoking and disturbing experience rather than a lecture.Gaia 2021.
The opening scene is straight out of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: two people paddle down a river in a canoe. The river is crowded in on all sides by thick jungly green. It’s a lonely sight, often presented from a God’s eye view (appropriate since these two people are operating a drone, buzzing above and around them). Winston (Anthony Oseyemi) and Gabi (Monique Rockman) both work for the forestry service, and when their drone disappears in the forest, Gabi decides to get out of the canoe and go find it. Winston warns her of the dangers. Gabi is adamant: the drone is now “trash” and they mustn’t leave their trash behind. What is meant to be a quick errand turns instantly into a confusing incoherent nightmare, when Gabi encounters (a nice way to put it) a couple of survivalists: father Barend (Carel Nel) and son Stefan (Alex van Dyk). The two emerge, dirt-covered, rail-thin, wielding hand-made tools, draped in rags, like cavemen of yore. Winston, meanwhile, sets off into the forest to find his colleague. Big mistake.