This experimental documentary by Jesse McLean about houseplants inspired me to go around my house and water all my vegetal housemates and treat the mealybug infections afflicting the jade plants in my office. Now I feel better for it in every way, while also basking in the afterglow of this luminous piece of film-making that is cinematic fertiliser for thought.
With a gentle touch that blends wonder and wit, prioritising none of the different voices and viewpoints we hear over any other (and that includes from plants themselves), McLean builds up an audiovisual collage of perspectives on plant-people relations. Some of the humans featured are merely silent subjects, often as still as the potted protagonists themselves. One woman is a bit woo-woo – but persuasively and charmingly so – about how one of her plants seemed to wither away with loneliness after being separated from her mother-in-law’s tongue plant it sat next to for years, only to become rejuvenated when they were reunited.
A man who cares painstakingly for the many plants in the Golda Meir library at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee speaks more pragmatically about the art of repotting and optimal placement. His manner comes across as eminently self-effacing but clearly his knowledge is grounded deep in years of close observation, like of many of the other plant lovers we meet here. That includes two aging bonsai specialists who movingly celebrate the oldest specimen’s gnarls and scars, which speak of the tree’s history. Elsewhere, a young man discourses passionately about integrating plants as design elements into minimalist decor, their abundance and randomness a welcome challenge to the austerity of his aesthetic principles.
Throughout, McLean weaves in abstract photography as well as on-screen text that is meant to represent a plant speaking, describing what photosynthesis feels like for them. “It feels good to become unstable, to turn light energy into chemical energy,” the text says. Botany fans will thrill to the jargon drops here, the chatter of “vascular bundles” and “stomata and antennae” that leavens the weightier, more metaphysical musings on the synergistic connections between humans and plants. This is perhaps undercut by some of the plants towards the end talking among themselves, and laughing at our need to parse everything up with taxonomies and nomenclature.
Unsurprisingly given McLean’s background in photography and visual art, Light Needs is immaculately filmed with lenses that capture the finest textures on every organism’s surface, be it skin or leaf. A thoughtful electronic score adds a playful touch throughout, and this works as a coherent film despite its fragmentary parts. Immaculate.