Mushrooms and fungi are some of the oldest surviving life forms on Planet Earth, and they don't just survive, they thrive. They are part of the circle of life that comes at the beginning and the end, where they break down the dead into their nutrients that then go on to feed and nurture the next generation of plants and animals, and not only that but they can feed humans too, vital to the production of yeasts, cheeses, and more. More than that, they can hold medicinal properties which help many varied problems both physical and mental, and there is a growing movement to champion this remarkable example of the natural world at its most beneficial and benevolent: this is the story of some of the most ardent proponents.
Have you ever gone to some talk or other, just out of curiosity, only to find it isn't an overview of some fascinating area of history or culture, but the speaker has a hardline agenda to convert you to their cause? Or how about you get talking to a stranger, or someone you know to say hello to in passing, when they divert the conversation to their religion where you realise they are trying their hardest to recruit you to their set of spiritual beliefs? If not, and you want to see what that experience is like, how about watching director Louie Schwartzberg's documentary cum puff(ball) piece Fantastic Fungi? Because it comes across as religious cult literature posing as information; not that it doesn't have a point, but the overall presentation is offputting.
Also, as an aside, all the mushroom maniacs here pronounce the word "fungi" as "funjy" for some reason, yet all pronounce the words "fungus" and "fungal" with a hard G, which is particularly jarring to listen to over and over. But there were bigger problems than that, as it was really designed to promote one of the most fervent exponents of mushrooms, amateur "mycologist" turned professional obsessive Paul Stamets, whose heart may have been in the right place, but was so fixated on his pet subject that he could not see anything in the world that could not be improved by them. For the first half hour, Schwartzberg lulled the viewer into a false sense of security with a fairly interesting natural history of fungi, highlighted by his speciality, the time lapse photography, though marred by some hokey CGI sequences.
After that was over with, the suspicions someone wanted to sell you something engendered by Brie Larson's starry-eyed narration would be confirmed when Stamets began to make a stronger case for the focus on solving everything with mushrooms, culminating in claims that psilocybin drawn from them could cure mental illness, which was by no means universally accepted. Indeed, most psychiatrists would tell their patients to stay away from mind altering drugs, not that any message like that was imparted here, and the worry that the promotion of psychedelics could do more damage than good was not even considered. The material about oil slicks being broken down by fungus was accurate enough, and good to be reminded of, but that was soon discarded by the documentary when it descended into quackery. There was no opposite argument to point out the drawbacks, it was all evangelising from beginning to end, and that may leave you feeling cheated if you were not prepared to buy into its hammered home preoccupations. Music by Adam Peters.
[Fantastic Fungi is in UK Cinemas from 6th November 2020 and available on Apple TV, Amazon and Google Play from 9th November 2020.]
