Movie Thoughts: Christian: The Lion at World's End (1971)

• Released: 1971
  
• Directed by: Bill Travers
  
• Running time: 1 h 29 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

A documentary about Christian, a lion cub raised in a furniture store in London. It documents the process of trying to re-introduce him into the wild.

My Thoughts

I've always been interested in Christians story, having watched two documentaries about it now and also having read the book. This is an overall pretty good documentary about Christian's life.

We start out with him being bought quite impulsively by his former owners Ace and John, who love him but soon realize that he has grown too large for the furniture store and, if possible, should be returned to the wild or at least to Africa. They go through a long process, and eventually a now-"teenage" Christian is brought over to Kenya, where he's going to undergo a process of "re-wilding" by George Adamson, who is famous for having previously successfully released another captive-reared lioness named Elsa into the wilderness. Christian is placed in an "artificial" lion pride (one formed by Adamson of various other lions he acquired) all with the same goal: eventually releasing them back into the wild.

I will say that, despite how hopefully the documentary portrays this, I still think it's doubtful that Christian was successfully re-wilded. It's extremely difficult to bring an animals, especially that has only lived for humans for most of its life, back into the wild. Even if they do manage to find their instincts to survive, they still will always be accustomed to humans, which makes them potentially dangerous as they don't know that people should be left alone. 

Heck, this is even shown in Boy, one of Christian's early pride members. Boy was a large lion Adamson also looked after, and like Christian he got to roam semi-freely around the reserve, but he eventually ended up killing one of Adamson's assistants, resulting in Boy having to be shot. And it can't be ruled out that Christian won't ever do this, either. He's just as accustomed to humans as Boy was, if not more.

The documentary also was filmed before Christian completely vanished into the wild, so it doesn't tell us that we just don't know what happened to the lion. He left Adamson's terrain and traveled into the reserve by himself in 1973, and after that was never seen again. 

We don't know whether he lived a long and happy life or starved or died some other way. The documentary never explores whether or not he has any hunting instincts, so he might very well starve to death because he can't hunt properly or simply doesn't know how to. He's been fed for most of his life, and it's never shown in the documentary that they were trying to train him to hunt. He just vanished and was never seen again and I guess we're supposed to be hopeful about it.

The reunion clip that went viral around 2008 was of course quite the phenomenon, where Ace and John visit Christian after a year of absence and the lion not only still recognizes them, but also embraces them. And, again, this looks cute, but it also shows that Christian is not afraid to go near humans, which could of course end very badly for him in nature all by himself. Even if he doesn't have any bad intentions when getting near them, most people aren't exactly looking to have a lion approach them and try to "hug" them.

I also think it's quite a shame that Ace and John were never once interviewed throughout all of this. They appear in the clips, but they don't really get to tell their story at all. The only person who really gets to do this is Adamson, and while he is obviously very relevant to the whole "reintroducing to the wild" subject, I feel like Ace and John should've gotten some time to share their thoughts and feelings as well. It's their lion, or at least was, after all.

While a good subject for a documentary, I legitimately doubt whether or not Christian truly succeeded in the wild. He was all alone without his pride by the time he left, so he very well might have died early. Or he lived a long and happy life and formed his own pride. Who knows. That's part of the mystery the documentary can't touch on.