If you’ve got “face of fungi” biologist Merlin Sheldrake’s global bestseller Entangled Life on your bookshelf, unbattered and spine uncracked, this documentary might feel like an easier option. A beginner’s guide to fungi, just 40 minutes long, it is narrated by Björk and presented by the gently eccentric Sheldrake (imagine Timothée Chalamet playing a Cambridge academic, with a mop of unruly curls). It’s being released in 3D on the giant screen at London’s BFI Imax – all the better to gawp at Steve Axford’s trippy time-lapse photography of strange, wondrous and beautiful fungi.
Like Sheldrake’s book, the film is on a mission to change the way we look at fungi – and the world. Fungi made life possible on Earth, and virtually all trees – and 90% of plants – rely on fungus to survive. The vast underground networks of fungi that provide trees with nutrients – the “wood wide web” – are dazzlingly visualised here. Fungus is a miracle worker too: giving us life-saving medicines and decomposing organic matter. (Without fungi, forests would be tree-deep in animal carcasses.)
Mushrooms are having a moment. The film tours a lab in upstate New York that makes vegan leather out of mushrooms, as well as an eco-friendly polystyrene alternative that you can put in your kitchen food waste bin. In China, researchers are working on a plastic-eating fungus that could help tackle plastic pollution. Sheldrake visits Tasmania’s ancient Tarkine forest, tiptoeing gently through the fungi – but he didn’t write the script, and fans will miss his winning whimsical way with a metaphor and Tom Waits quote. In fact, my only issue with the film is that it never quite lives up to the kooky supergroup pairing of Sheldrake and Björk.
That said, the script is full of cool wrap-your-brain-around-them facts, which makes it great for nature-loving kids. It sparked enough mycological curiosity for me to reach for the unread copy of Entangled Life on the bookshelf.
• Fungi: Web of Life is released on 9 February at BFI Imax, London.
