At the onset, Gonçalo Tocha states his intentions, that he will film everything and everybody, go everywhere and anywhere and will not miss a thing while on Corvo, the smallest island (pop. 440) in the Azores archipelago, the farthest tip of Europe in the middle of the Atlantic. For the next three hours, this doc plays out a gentle, warm, intimate visual diary in 14 chapters. Clouds pass by, rough sea, people's faces and their stories, losing the old way of life, etc.
Corvo, however isolated it looks from a distance, is not dissimilar to any small European town- a school, city municipality, airport, landfill, elections, cars, slaughter house etc. Holding a shot no more than 2-3 minutes, Tocha's fleeting sketches of the island and the lack of the usual eccentrics are quite anti-climactic compared to Herzog's bombastic documentaries, although they both deal with mysticism of a particular place, searching for truth and all that. It isn't quite like travel shows like Globe Trekker or anthropological study either. Tocha quietly takes all in and provides a slight, gentle voiceover in conversation with his only other crew, Didio Pestana, his sound man. It's Not the Earth is like a warm blanket, a fine mist that clings to your skin, or a bowl of hot chicken and noodle soup on a cold day. It's all very comfortable, even though it takes place at the end of the world, cut off by enormous and powerful sea. I can watch this all day long.
