At first glance, this week’s PBS Nature program Hippo King takes a page from the BBC Dynasties school of nature programming, in which intrepid filmmakers follow a single family of animals in their natural habitat over a period of several years. Field biologists and other academics take a dim view of the anthropomorphism of wild animals. Still, as Dynasties showed, audiences connect more with a story if they can chart the life of one life over a period of several years. The baby hippo at the heart of Hippo King’s opening scenes will grow, as the title foreshadows, to become a leader among leaders. It’s The Lion King origin story all over again, and while it’s true that linking animal behaviour to our human behaviour can seem cloying and overwrought at times, there’s something to be said for engaging as broad an audience as possible. The truth is, as the world edges toward Earth Day later this month, the world’s remaining wild places are in serious trouble, beset on all sides by climate breakdown, human overconsumption, and political leaders who range from apathetic and ineffectual to homicidal and despotic, bent on war, genocide and planet-wide destruction of the environment. Set against such an appalling backdrop, a tale of baby hippo growing up to become king of his domain may seem a light-hearted diversion.
Hippo King is anything but, however. Survival is an individual pursuit, after all. Some survive, others don’t. The cycle of life often turns on the finest of margins — an unforeseen accident, a chance encounter with a hungry lion, sharing a watery home with crocodiles lying in wait for an easy meal.
Hippo King was filmed over five years in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley, a riverine region in Southern Africa relatively untrammeled by convoys of tourist jeeps — Luangwa was one of the pioneers on the African continent of so-called ‘walking safaris’ — and so there’s a freshness to what might seem to the unpracticed eye like just another nature program about African wildlife. Witnessing the day-to-day struggle for survival of the fittest while on foot is an entirely different experience from watching from the relative safety of a 4x4 Land Cruiser, and Hippo King provides the kind of intimate and personal view usually reserved for a safari on foot.
Hiking across the African savanna is out of reach for most nature enthusiasts, though, so programs like Hippo King, when they’re well made — and Hippo King is at the high end of the nature-filmmaking spectrum — serve a useful purpose.
There’s an affecting moment, early in the film when, stricken by hunger and dehydration, the future king’s mother perishes in the heat and dust, and the adolescent hippo, standing over his mother’s body, tries to fend off a pride of lions from feeding on her remains. Eventually the adolescent hippo makes it to safety in the nearby river, but the die is cast: This young bull may become king one day but it will not be an easy life.
Hippo King is graced with an affecting musical score — none of the usual rote, computer-generated noise of most documentary programs — and the cinematography, culled from five years of footage, is resplendent and revealing by turns.
Hippo King also benefits from recent, dramatic advances in infrared camera technology that allows filmmakers — and viewers — to see at night, when wild animals tend to be more active than in the white-hot glare of noonday heat. The sound recording, mixing and editing are crisp and clear throughout, and that’s a valuable addition. Sound in nature films can be just as important as the visuals.
Hippos are not the animated dancing ballerinas of Disney’s animated Sword in the Stone, nor are they the bad-tempered night raiders often accused of killing more people in Africa than any other wild animal — a misleading statistic. They are surprisingly shy and complex creatures, with day-to-day lives distinctly different from other, more familiar African mammals like rhinos, elephants and lions.
In the end, Hippo King is a tale of survival that works on several levels, from micro — one hippo’s life story — to macro: the effects increasingly volatile and rapidly changing climate patterns are having on entire ecosystems.
Hippo King premieres Wednesday, April 6 on PBS Nature at 8/7C (check local listings), at pbs.org/nature and on the PBS Video app.
©Will Steenkamp - PBS Nature