Ratfink's Review: The Last Lions.

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Lions. The king of the beasts. The most awesome of the cats. To those who have seen lions in the flesh, the screen of a laptop or TV is good, but still doesn't do these larger-than-life cats proper justice. Thankfully, the African lion has been given its proper place on the big screen in National Geographic's The Last Lions, an amazing, gripping film by film makers Dereck and Beverly Joubert. And for an urgent reason.

*Warning-spoilers ahead.*

Africa is sometimes called The Dark Continent. If you looked at it from space however, when it was cloaked in night's darkness, you'd see with a shock that the name is no longer appropriate. A galaxy of human dwellings glitters over what were once vast dark expanses of savanna and forest. With them come guns, spears, arrows, clubs, and poison.
For lions, this has resulted in disaster. Fifty years ago, around 450,000 lions roamed and roared across Africa. Now, there may only be 20,000! In one of these still-dark patches, the Okavango Delta in Botswana, lives a newly formed pride, consisting of one male, 3 cubs, and their mother, Madetau, or Mother of Lions. Squeezed and stressed by human settlement, another pride invades their territory, and attacks. The male lion is fatally mauled in the ensuing battle, and Madetau gets a beating as well.
Without her mate, she and her cubs are now defenseless against the invading males, which will kill the cubs if they can. So will the lionesses, for that matter. Hunted and stalked by the males, with a brushfire blocking the best escape route, Madetau is forced to swim across a deep river with her cubs in tow, the last in line falling victim to a crocodile. Madetau and her two surviving cubs now find themselves on a large island called Duba. For now, it's a refuge. But not for long. Madetau and her cubs are soon joined on the island by a huge herd of Cape buffalo led by a hulking, scar-faced bull. They will become Madetau's prey of choice-but also a fearsome adversary. And then the rival pride, led by the grim lioness Silvereye, makes an appearance on Duba. Now Madetau has a choice. Struggle on alone? Or risk everything to become a part of Silvereye's pride and assure a future for her cubs...

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Continued-This was an amazing, spectacular film. Every shot is beautifully detailed, with rich, vibrant colors. We are treated to gorgeous shots of African sunrises and sunsets, crackling lightening, great dark rainclouds swirling and massing together, shadowy buffalo filing silently through silvery twilight mist, and the vibrant, vibrant green of the Okavango's reeds and grass. Filming a wild animal's life as it happens naturally while trying to tell a dramatic, exciting story at the same time relies so much on both dedication and luck, and one can't help but be aware of how fortunate the Jouberts were to find a lioness like Madetau in a situation where everything just came together in the right way. One thing I enjoyed about this documentary is that it never judges or condems its subjects. Madetau attacks and kills buffalo calves-but it is shown to be for the sake of herself and her cubs, not to be evil or cruel. Hyenas swipe the remains of a calf from Madetau, cackling and whooping in excitement-but they have a right to feed themselves too. The Jouberts are also bluntly honest about the way things are in nature, the realest and harshest world of all. We see Madetau's vanquished mate sprawled next to a channel, his left eye a torn, inflamed, pink mass of tissue, his left thigh a bitten, muddy, septic mess. We see Silvereye bleeding from a cuff upside the head after a skirmish with Madetau. And in perhaps the film's most heartwrenching scene, with a respectful lack of narration that only further adds to the shock, we register the horrific results of what a visit by Scarface and his herd have resulted in for a seemingly healthy cub-a smashed lower back and/or hip that forces Madetau to leave her daughter to die. And of course, there are the results of both failed and successful predations.

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Part 3-Finally, and refreshingly, while the script, read so eloquently by Jeremy (Be Prepared!) Irons cautions us that it is difficult and at times probably impossible to know what goes on in the heart and head of Madetau, Silvereye, or any other nonhuman animal, Madetau and her cubs are also not robots made of flesh either. Descartes and Skinner both left a sad, painful, and probably self-destructive attitude in their wake, the idea that animals are unfeeling machines driven by instinct and base desires, and that to suggest otherwise is to commit the mortal, sentimental sin of anthropomorphism, projecting ourselves onto them. However, the movie doesn't shy from displaying a careful, pragmatic anthropomorphism, acknowledging what people who know nonhuman animals well already understand intuitively, while also pointing out that Madetau is still a lioness, and not a person. To see how she sits down and closes her eyes tightly on realizing her cub is fatally wounded, her joy on finding her lost son at the end, her deliberate rushing and mauling of Scarface, her hissing in agitation before plunging into the deep water, her bold new strategy for getting to the buffalo, is to see a being with at least a degree of emotion and intelligence.
At the end, Madetau and her son now have a place in Silvereye's pride, and we are asked the wrenching question, what will the future hold for Madetau's son and his kind? Will he live to grow a magnificent, full mane? Will his descendants continue to shatter the dawn with thier roars? Or will he be one of the last wild African lions?

The Last Lions= A roaring 4.5 out of 5 stars!