Richard Bangs' Adventures with Purpose: India, Quest for the One-Horned Rhino Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Richard Bangs' Adventures with Purpose: India, Quest for the One-Horned Rhino Blu-ray Movie Review

One of the more personal episodes of Bangs' series finds the explorer in Assam, India, looking for a species that was almost extinct only about a century ago.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 7, 2009

Americans pride themselves, rightly or wrongly considering our somewhat spotty track record, as environmental activists with a long history of at least attempting to address concerns about pollution and endangered species. And so it may come as something of a surprise to some viewers of this particular episode of the Richard Bangs Adventures with Purpose series to find that far off India was doing pretty remarkable work in protecting both its land and especially its endangered rhinos as early as the first decade of the 20th century. That’s just one of many little nuggets that gets unearthed during this interesting outing to Assam, a state in northeast part of the country that, in one of Bangs’ expository flights of fancy, “floats like a kite on the shoulder of India.”

This docile enough looking elephant decided to come out of hiding and block the road the Bangs expedition was trying to use (see the next screenshot, too).

Bangs, as I’ve indicated in other reviews of this series, is a fun and affable host, obviously knowledgeable about his subject matter and filled with an almost childlike sense of wonder at times when he attempts to communicate that awe to his audience. That can give us the poetic turns of phrase as in the “kite” comparison above, or it can sometimes come off as forced and even patently goofy, as when Bangs mentions that he likes to “aim for perfection” in travel, meaning no luggage, and yet the elephant on which he’s riding, still “carries a trunk.” Exactly—I wasn’t laughing, either. But if you can get past Bangs’ occasionally florid narrative style, there’s some very interesting information here, as the explorer looks at this little known part of India on his quest to get footage of the very rare one horned rhino, a species native to this part of the world and one which was literally within just a few surviving individuals of becoming extinct.

Assam is largely wild, at least in the sections covered by Bangs, and that means we encounter everything from a somewhat calm “rogue” elephant who is blocking the road the Bangs expedition is trying to travel down to, much more sadly, the still rampant poaching that is killing rhinos in order to harvest their horns for supposed aphrodisiacs. There is in fact a somewhat shocking scene of a dead rhino whose horn has obviously been cut whole from the poor animal’s snout, so this is probably not a travelogue to share with younger, more easily frightened viewers. On the other hand, there’s actually a delightful moment or two in the elephant sequence when Bangs’ Indian guides literally talk to the elephant, asking it what it needs in order to get out of the expedition’s way.

There is also a nice informative sequence on various harvest rituals, with some interesting little snacks made of coconut and sugar cane, and another sequence on the “national drink,” tea, where Bangs show us fields of leaves which are harvested into the product that has become a worldwide staple. But the ultimate focus of this episode is the one horned rhino, something that is finally seen in the final few minutes of the episode when Bangs and his troupe go to a game preserve which is home to several of the rare animals. It was little more than a century ago when rampant hunting had decimated this species to an incredible dozen or so, shocking the Indian government to a point where they became one of the first national bodies to really become environmentally active, immediately outlawing the killing of the beasts and helping to set up environmentally protected areas, not just for the rhinos but for other species, not to mention the welfare of the land itself. Today there are several thousand one horned rhinos and the species, while perhaps not as prevalent as it once was, is no longer on the verge of disappearing from the planet. There’s a very eloquent segment with an Indian game warden talking, perhaps more than a bit dismissively, about the Western world’s fascination with technology and the latest gadgets. He then rather pointedly asks, not so rhetorically, how even a Westerner would propose to re-create a species which had become extinct. It’s rather potent food for thought.

This is a colorful and at times very musical trip through a little known part of India. We get to float down large swaths of the huge Brahmaputra River, visiting an inland island and also some semi-urban centers that are a fascinating mix of the ancient and modern. Bangs, who evidently has led many first expeditions down many of the world’s less explored bodies of water, is obviously quite at home in the inflatable raft, barking out orders on how to steer. He somewhat more laconic in the landlocked segments, quietly admitting his own failings in helping to preserve the rhinos when he was afforded that opportunity several years ago. It’s obvious therefore that this is perhaps one of the more personal journeys Bangs offers in this Adventures with Purpose series, giving Quest for the One Horned Rhino a more visceral element than the typical travelogue that dots the PBS airwaves.

Richard Bangs' Adventures with Purpose: India, Quest for the One-Horned Rhino Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

All of these Adventures with Purpose offerings have, thus far at least, been a case of half glass full or half glass empty, image wise. Encoded via MPEG-2, India frequently offers a stunningly sharp and extremely well saturated and very colorful image. Details can be sharp and amazingly clear, allowing you to see, for example, the refracted light of a camera in the unbelievable red of an elephant's eye. However, India also struggles more than occasionally with horrible ringing, shimmer and edge enhancement. There are scenes of Bangs amid trees and fields of wheat where the ringing and shimmer is so bad it literally looks like digital noise. If you can overlook these flaws, there's a lot to like here, as India is indeed one of the more colorful outings in the Bangs series that I've yet seen. Women wear saris of incredible hues where sharpness is such you can actually see the weavework of the silk, and the animals of course offer textures galore, including the armored plates which cover the rhino's hide.

Richard Bangs' Adventures with Purpose: India, Quest for the One-Horned Rhino Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

India has an uncompressed PCM 2.0 track that is generally quite fine considering the fact that a lot of the documentary is simply Bangs talking, either on screen or via voiceover narration. However, this episode does also feature a wealth of ethnic music, including a long musical segment at a harvest festival, and I must admit I longed for a more immersive surround sound experience at those times. The music here is quite wonderful, marked by the great low "thunk" of the tablas, but also elevated by a lot of vocals and some great wind instruments. There isn't a wealth of ambient sound on this episode, though what's here, notably a lot of neat water noises, are reproduced with clarity if not outstanding directionality. You can quite clearly hear the difference between Bangs' live on camera commentary and post-looped material.

Richard Bangs' Adventures with Purpose: India, Quest for the One-Horned Rhino Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

I am once again scratching my head as to why these Blu-rays offer no real supplements when the included advertisements for the SD-DVD versions of these titles boast about "over two hours of bonus content." Did no one think we'd notice? Once again, all that is offered (aside from the broadcast version ads, if you consider those extras) are other Adventures with Purpose trailers, and a web portal link.

Richard Bangs' Adventures with Purpose: India, Quest for the One-Horned Rhino Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Richard Bangs' personal involvement with the environmental movement as a whole, and the attempt to rescue the one-horned rhino in particular, make this an unusually personal episode in his Adventures with Purpose series. There are some significant authoring problems on this Blu-ray, making it less than wonderful to view at least some of the time, but this might be an informative rental for those of you with an interest in the region.