Pandora's Promise

(https://www.berkeleyside.org/2013/06/13/big-screen-berkeley-pandoras-promise)

The documentary I chose to watch is Pandora's Promise, I had many films in mind but I went with this one because it stood out to me when I read the description. It mentioned the idea that nuclear energy may have been misunderstood as being a pollutant but instead could be used for doing good. Finding out that it was about nuclear energy was interesting enough for me because I find strange or uncommon topics in the science world fascinating. I already had a small amount of knowledge about Nuclear energy so I wanted to further that understanding, which is why I chose this film.  

A specific scene that stood out to me is when they showed Chernobyl and how the nuclear energy leak effected the city. It was almost like the people who used to live there just stopped what they were doing, left everything in it's place, and went on with their lives in another area. It was a frightening image to see how everything was abandoned and left in time but it was also so interesting to see how time has effected the buildings and objects that were left. Everything was slowly being decayed by time, paint was peeling off walls, glass shattered everywhere, and children's toys being faded of their character. This gave me a chilling feeling, but not in the bad way though. This scene made me want to watch and learn more about the effects nuclear energy has and the theories people have made it out to be.  

Something that surprised me was that the environmentalists admitted that they previously sought out nuclear energy as being a harmful carcinogen but realized they might have been wrong. At first I was just confused as to how they could find something so harmful to be thought of as being good for the environment. The film mentions that 3,000,000 people die each year from the fossil fuel combustion in the air. The scene then cuts into a graph showing the mortality rates that are associated with each energy source. The energy source that had the highest mortality rate was coal, followed by oil and then they show the lowest. The lowest was, in fact, nuclear energy. It was safer than solar power. Which is insanely surprising to learn and to actually understand why the environmentalist have questioned their previous theories. This caught me off guard because I always thought nuclear energy was known for causing cancer, but then the film also hits you with another surprising fact about how the deaths of the people from the abandoned nuclear cities were not tied to cancer. These things are what keeps the film alive with surprise. 

After viewing the film, Pandora's Promise, I still questioned why theorists decided to look back and tie together helping the environment with something that was well known to be very harmful to humans and other life. This is why the feeling of surprise stayed with me throughout this film. I was very interested in everything it had to give. It was unexpected because I never thought that a documentary could draw me and my feelings in so close together. 

Now to talk about summaries and reflections, I think that research should not be included in a summary because it defeats the purpose of gathering main points and scenes that happened and adding facts that might not be included or tied to the information of the film. Another reason is that a summary of a film is to only give detail of what happened. It's almost like you are creating a timeline and putting it into words on how the film was played out.