Celebrate Green Blog

Dirt, the Movie, like most great documentaries, left me wondering and embarrassed about why I had never once really considered the deep importance of its topic.

I think of myself as a fairly curious person. But even the haunting photographs from Oklahoma’s Dust Bowl days which are some of the most strongly imprinted pictures from the millions I’ve seen in my lifetime, never caused me to consider the value of dirt.

And although I’m a gardener and producing great quantities of thick, brown compost is the holy grail, and I know intellectually that life stems from dirt, until I saw this movie, I never truly understood.

From dirt not only comes our food, but for millions of years and people, shelter. It is the source of medicines, cosmetics, clothing and billions of livelihoods.

And yet, humanity abuses it as terribly-if not more so, than we do the air and the water.

The results of our terrorizing dirt are famine, drought, flooding, and misery for both humans and animals.

For me at least, this movie was a wake-up call. As we seek to mend the damage already done to the Earth, we must include how we can as individuals, reconnect to the source of life beneath our feet and what we can do to help, as so beautifully put in the film, to repair “the living skin of the Earth.”

I must add that despite the subject, the movie is anything but dry. (I’m not embarrassed to admit I love puns, even bad ones like this!) Yes, Dirt! is packed with facts and made me think, but it is not totally heavy handed. A certain amount of silliness lightens the tone and makes this film appropriate for interested kids as well as adults.

Have you seen Dirt! The Movie? What do you think?