The Human Body

4 Stars

Rating

Not Rated

Director

Peter Georgi

Every body is truly "awesome"

Starring

The complexities of the human body are explored by investigating, in great detail, many functions the body performs routinely every day.

IMAX takes MAX to the mini by using the latest in technology to travel inside our body to look at how we function. We watch the trip of a cherry tomato from mouth to stomach, a peak inside a heart valve as it opens and closes, and a human egg (the largest cell) being fertilized by a sperm.

Packed into 40 minutes are a host of facts, stunning images and a story that holds it all together. We follow the lives of Buster and Heather Pike who are house/child sitting for their niece and nephew Zannah and Luke (Zannah Lawrence and Luke Brinkers). This well put together film touches on what goes into the body as well as what comes out, without being gross or inappropriate. By the end of the film we see Heather give birth to her baby and the genital areas of infant boys and girls in a swimming pool.

Watching hair grow and seeing the moving x-rays of a dog running behind Luke as he's riding his bike was fascinating. Looking at an egg as a sea of sperm made its way toward it gave meaning to "the moment of conception." Seeing a hand form as cells die, to create fingers from a paddle, was stunning, as it debunks our thinking on the way that limbs develop.

Some `gee whiz, I bet you didn't know' facts about our bodies that inform and entertain both adults and children are:

The human body loses 200 billion red blood cells each day. Fortunately, our bodies' manufacture 2 million replacement cells every second. Just one red blood cell may travel 100 miles through a vast network of 60,000 miles of veins, capillaries and arteries.

When we open our eyes in the morning, the top layer of our vision sense receptors is literally scorched away.

The human brain is the largest user of energy in our body, consuming 20% of the energy produced by what we eat and drink. It uses this energy to fire electrical impulses at 250 miles per hour.

A sperm is the tiniest cell in the human body while the egg is the largest. 500,000,000 sperm are released in a single ejaculation. A few hundred will make it to the fallopian tubes where the egg is housed and just a few dozen will complete their journey.

Using the latest in technology, such as thermal imagery, advanced scanning electron microscopes, leading edge medical computer graphics, motion-control photography and X-ray techniques, this film "…brings images to the audience on a scale never before captured in the history of cinema."

Three years in the making, "The Human Body" is a power packed documentary/science project that holds your attention every moment. Unlike most IMAX films, which take us far from home, this personal view shows us being us.