Rebellion: CBC's The Nature of Things turns 60 with an overreaching roundup of global youth movements

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B

As it enters its 60th season – yes, you read right – CBC’s The Nature of Things remains one of those shows I always watch if encountered while channel-flipping. There are issues, and often there are animals. On Friday, it’s the troubled two-legged kind.

And it speaks to the show’s longevity that not one but two father-daughter combinations are at work in Rebellion, a documentary about the worldwide youth movements working in tandem on social and environmental issues.

The Nature of Things’s Rebellion takes the temperature as youth-fuelled environment movements heat up

The co-directors are Mark Starowicz, a legendary documentary producer whose name evokes 50 years of CBC history, and his daughter, science and nature documentarian Caitlin Starowicz.

Meanwhile, host David Suzuki gets to interview his own daughter Severn Cullis-Suzuki, who had her Greta Thunberg moment at age 13 when she addressed the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio in 1992.

Mostly, however, Rebellion is a crash-course in every social issue that has frustrated and inspired a new generation of activists. 

There’s a sense that this was a straightforward assignment going in – 2019 was the year of Greta after all. And much of the film is wrapped around climate change, with focus on Thunberg, nature filmmaker Sir David Attenborough (who has changed his message from awe over the beauty of nature to alarm at its state of peril), and Gail Bradbrook of the Extinction Rebellion movement that has made headlines with dramatic protests around the globe.

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But 2020 clearly threw a spanner in the works. All of a sudden, a clear theme was muddled by a pandemic and concurrent global racial unrest following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. There is far too much going on to tie together, but Rebellion ties away anyway, attempting to connect the environment and racial injustice into a single issue.

The change in thematic course is eloquently stated by Rev. Lennox Yearwood, who calls 2020 “a transformative moment” for the planet and for the socially conscious. “This movement is now beginning to understand what it means to take care of humanity,” he says. “It’s a time to care about our brothers and sisters here on this planet.”

But his words don’t change the fact that Rebellion often feels like two social issue movies sewn together. They’re important social issues, and we do in fact meet environmental activists taking part in Black Lives Matter protests. But there’s no solid case that the two movements are intimately entwined.

The movie Rebellion was meant to be is a pretty good snapshot of global environmental action, and the personalities behind it.

Like Thunberg, who started out as a lone protester, teenage climate activist Jerome Foster stood alone in the rain in front of the White House, finding followers who responded to his lonely act of protest. Meanwhile, Indian activist Bhavreen Kandhari leads an environmental “children’s army,” and original environmental leader Bill McKibben of 350.org occupies the Chase Bank with his followers.

In a year where the environment could stand as the number one issue on people’s minds, Rebellion would be brilliantly on point. It’s still an illuminating doc, even if it overextends its reach in this benighted year..

Rebellion. Directed by Mark Starowicz and Caitlin Starowicz. Stars David Suzuki, Sir David Attenborough and Gail Bradbrook. Rebellion kicks off the 60th season of The Nature of Things, Friday, November 6, 9 p.m. and streams on CBC Gem.