Written by Daryll Williams

Wild elephants are the largest living land animals in Africa and around the world. These creatures are known for their high intelligence, emotional sensitivity, close family bonds, and vulnerability. Many of the elephants we see in zoos and circuses have been stolen as calves, separated from their loved ones, and then shipped and traded worldwide. Scientific studies have shown that these captives suffer under isolation from their kind and fail to thrive and reproduce as well as they would on protected lands or sanctuaries. But the most appalling and dangerous threat to wild elephants is the ever-present risk of being brutally killed for their ivory tusks. This is the story that The Ivory Game attempts to tell, highlighting the ongoing devastation of the world's elephant population to supply the ivory market and international efforts to stop that destruction.

Watching it makes for quite a wild ride, are you up to the tusk?🐘

January’s Binge: The Ivory Game

“One person has the destiny of an entire species in his hands.”

Run time: 112 minutes

Richard Ladkani and Kief Davidson co-direct this profoundly moving film about a band of heroic figures doing all they can to protect Africa's wild elephants from greedy poachers who are killing these animals and selling ivory tusks to dealers in China and elsewhere in the world. Almost all of these men and women are spokespersons for the elephants they love and respect. And they also freely admit that solving the problem means considering its incredible complexity.

With the same kind of passion and creativity poured into their previous Oscar-winning documentary, The Cove, the film begins strongly, profiling various people fighting to protect elephants by different means. A park ranger talks to local farmers, who are upset about the animals eating their crops (and are thus not inclined to report poachers), about plans to build an electrified fence. A Chinese activist, ashamed at his country’s role in the crisis — the vast majority of poached ivory winds up in China, which maintains a legal trade that’s heavily restricted but easily gamed — poses as a potential buyer to gain information about smugglers. We see officials in Kenya burn their entire 105-tonne stockpile of ivory, though the film does a poor job of explaining why doing so will theoretically help stop the killing. All of these folks seem like heroes, and footage of the elephants themselves — huge and lumbering, yet surpassingly gentle — makes it hard to understand how poachers pull the trigger, even for a mega profit.

The sustainability factor

Overall: 4/5

Despite focusing much of its narrative on the geopolitics of the ivory trade, the elephants are at the centre of the film. There were 1.7 million elephants in 1979; there are under 400.000 now. Every death is a true catastrophe as the adults who are killed tend to be the oldest — the ones with the biggest and best tusks — and the old elephants possess what can only be described as the species’ culture. As one of the rangers set to protect them says, “They are much more connected to each other than even humans are these days”. Older elephants teach younger elephants how to survive. One new trick they're developing is particularly damning of the role human beings are playing in their lives: Elephants have started to hide their tusks whenever people appear.

But the problem described in The Ivory Game is global, and elephants are only one example. The world is still on track to lose two-thirds of its animal species in the coming years.

The Viatu review

Themes:

The ivory trade is a global concern, pitting Western preservationists and African governments against Chinese ivory merchants and African poachers. The problem is the economic system as a whole, whose logistical chains have spread to cover the entire planet. The centre of the market for ivory is in Hong Kong, where the small amounts that are legal to sell — about 500 tonnes a year — have given elephant tusks extra value for money-launderers since ivory is untraceable. Ivory traders have no concern with conserving the source of what they harvest, unlike fishermen or hunters. The opposite is the case. The traders want elephants to go extinct because it will increase the value of their holdings. The fewer elephants alive, the more valuable ivory is.

Production:

Using concealed cameras — sometimes not concealed enough — the filmmakers capture numerous shady conversations between traders and undercover agents. Similar showdowns match these tense scenes in Africa, where officers routinely find poachers in the immediate aftermath of their malicious hunts. The resulting collage of personalities turns the documentary into a global war movie in which the survival of humans and elephants alike hangs in the balance.

What makes it different: 

The Ivory Game may be a harsh wake-up call to anyone concerned about the future of the largest land mammal. Still, it’s also a keen evaluation of the efforts being made to correct the situation. Even as it captures a dire situation, Davidson and Ladkani single out a series of engaging personalities risking everything to bring illegal traders to justice — and in some cases, making actual progress. By transforming its urgent message into a blockbuster — complete with dramatic music cues and frantic editing — The Ivory Game risks overstating its message, but at the same time, it makes the story more palatable. The you-are-there approach to tackling this subject means that the documentary avoids lecturing. Instead, the harrowing experiences speak for themself.

January’s Netflix & Change is one of insight, reflection, and action. The Ivory Game takes one small corner of a crisis and turns into a portrait of exactly how we are consuming everything we love into extinction. It is a film that explains more than it judges, making it much more powerful than the standard environmental documentary.

At Viatu, we’re attempting to forge a path towards similar progress. Join our journey on Instagram.