Movie Review (and Waxing Philosophical): Life After People

I was going through my 12th grade yearbook on Thursday. It made me mourn inside. First, I noticed the glaring absence of well wishes and memories inscribed in my previous yearbooks. Skimming through the book, I find that NO ONE at all wrote in it. Nothing penned, scribbled, signified, just page after page of black and white pictures and type. I mourned for allowing myself to check out of high school so soon and enter the corrupt world of adults. I remember where I was in 12th grade, and mentally, it was not in my high school classrooms nor with my peers.

I came across a photo of myself with the literary magazine staff - sooooo long is my frown in the picture, so straight my hair, so empty my eyes. One of the ugliest portraits I have ever seen. I couldn't even bring myself to scan it and post it on Facebook.

When I got to my senior year profile, complete with smiling portrait (that came out great, to my surprise), I read through my list of memories, friends, activities, and pet peeves. My pet peeve back in 1993? PEOPLE. UGH! How drole was I? How empty and alone? PEOPLE? That's the best I had? The entire population was my pet peeve? Almost as bad as my peers who wrote high school as their pet peeve.

Apparently, however, my peeve of people has not disappeared over the years, just been repressed and sublimated. Ever since seeing the preview for LIFE AFTER PEOPLE, I was anxious to get my hands on it, relish the view of a planet without jerks, misanthropes, idiots, scoundrels, and the like.

Life After People did not disappoint. Breaking down the devolution/evolution of Earth without its humans at certain periods across a timeline (1 day without people, 2 days without people.... 1 year without people, 3 years without people.... 10 years, 50 years, 100 years, 1000 years) - it all made me feel so utterly small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. All traces of human presence will be virtually eliminated after a thousand years. The only thing that would be left as proof that humans ever existed would be styrofoam. Mother Nature would reclaim Her world, vegetation would flourish, animals would again be free to roam. Peace would reign.

Like my yearbook, LIFE AFTER PEOPLE made me mourn.