Trouble in the Forest
1988 · 46m · Canada
Directed by Gary Toole
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, provocative
David Suzuki investigates forest dieback linked to acid rain, examining the frightening damage to forests and proposing possible solutions.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A David Suzuki environmental sermon dressed up as investigation—exactly the kind of consensus-approved message doc that makes contrarians itch. The acid rain panic is real enough, but where's the formal ambition, the weird angle, the thing that makes you question the frame itself?
Toole channels the rigorous expository tradition of the problem-solution documentary, letting Suzuki's measured inquiry and the forest's own damage carry the weight—a model of restraint that trusts the viewer to sit with complexity rather than manufacture outrage.
The choice to let dead and dying trees speak through long, unrushed photography rather than overlay crisis music is quietly devastating; that visual patience is what separates this from a PSA and makes the ecological argument actually land.