Thanks to spectacular images, Arnaud Guérin and Michael Pitiot intend to rehabilitate the natural legacy of the country. With, in a bonus, a making of, funny, limpid and exciting.
by
Without his geological past, France would never have become the first tourist destination in the world. Neither the homeland of hundreds of cheeses, the cathedral of Chartres, the castles of the Loire, of the Tarms of the Hauts-de-France, Mont-Saint-Michel … but who thinks there?
To rehabilitate this natural legacy passed in the background, behind the technological heritage, industrial, architectural, artistic or artisanal, the geologist Arnaud Guérin had the idea to propose to the director Michael Pitiot to tell in pictures this other story of France. That of these familiar landscapes to everyone as they were 200 or 300 million years ago.
Here are the visitors of the triumphal arch overlooking a gigantic wetland; those of Chambord Castle, feet in the water; The sheep of Cotentin frightened by a volcanic eruption; A mountain chain of 8,000 meters above sea level in place of the current Armorican massif … all commented by the voice of Philippe Torreton with a certain theatricality. “This earth, it was France and this air irregular his first breath,” said the actor.
Magic of special effects
Rather than reconstruct these landscapes in synthesis images, mm. Guérin and Pitiot preferred to use natural images. Leaving to get three years to bring them together, as they explain in the exciting Making of broadcast as a result of their documentary. Without renouncing the magic of special effects, which places the archiconus places of “eternal France” in the landscapes of millions of years ago, as anchronistic markers assumed. Thus of the opening sequence, where we see the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel planted at the top of the rocky peak, as it was 300 million years ago: the team of Turning has found the geological equivalent in Iceland, with its glaciers with bluish reflections and black deserts.
The trip in time is launched. New Zealand saw a very recently born mountain range – on a geological scale – by the sea. “ON [Y] goes from 0 to 3,700 meters above sea level,” says the director, as in Brittany he 300 million years ago. In the Australian bush, a lake of salt corresponds to the one that covered the soil of the solands. And in northwestern Australia today, the mangrove is similar to the one who occupied the Ile-de-France. “Tell me that there would have been no Cathedral of Paris if there had not been a mangrove makes me want to know the rest”, enthuses the producer Thibaut Camurat.
Some nuances appear. The Hauts-de-France mines have a more blatant geological legacy than the Landes, where the man turned the landscape stubbornly. “It’s no longer a legacy, but a victory over the natural history”, Breath Philippe Torreton, without knowing if he regrets or welcomes this victory …
“We do not mind what a handful of degrees can change …”, sighs the actor as a conclusion. A phrase that would have deserved to be valued in this pedagogical and family program, at a time when we begin to become aware of the geological impact that will have a global warming of a “handful of degrees”.