'Forces' provides a powerful, educational look at nature

With its terrifyingly beautiful images of molten lava and clouds of ash, shattered cities and whirling storms, "Forces of Nature" is spectacular, engrossing, and at times almost overwhelming in its power. But its real achievement -- and one that's much rarer for a large-format film -- is the way it uses its gigantic images to educate, engage, and draw connections between natural disasters and human lives.

Anybody can shoot cool pictures of erupting volcanoes, trembling earthquakes, and whirling tornadoes, and "Forces of Nature" has exceptionally cool pictures in abundance. What's wonderful about it, though, is that it uses those pictures to tell a story -- three stories, really, of scientists who are studying each of these phenomena and attempting to reduce the devastation they can cause.

After a quick recap of the Earth's formation -- along with nifty, realistic-looking shots that blend computer graphics and film to depict the sea of molten lava that was our planet 4 1/2 billion years ago -- we go to the Caribbean island of Montserrat, where in 1995 the Soufriere Hills volcano erupted in a massive explosion. Early warnings kept the death toll to 19, but the flowing lava and spewing ash still wrought havoc on the now-abandoned city of Plymouth.

Now, volcanologist Marie Edmonds and her team monitor the volcano, trying to find ways to detect activity sooner. As we meet Edmonds on screen, the narration shifts seamlessly from an unobtrusive Kevin Bacon to the scientist's voice. "I grew up wanting to be an astronaut or a spy," she says, "but living alongside an active volcano is just as exciting."

She's hooked us -- and the next thing you know, she's explaining how volcanoes form and erupt. As she talks, the image onscreen shifts from an aerial shot of Montserrat to the computer-generated image of what lies beneath it. This is terrific scientific storytelling, as you'd expect from the producers, National Geographic and Graphic Films. It's lively and personal, with solid facts presented in an engagingly human way.

The same thing happens in the segment on earthquakes, when geophysicist Ross Stein walks us around Izmit and Istanbul to discuss Turkey's precarious perch on the North Anatolian Fault. We get not just heartbreaking shots of the devastation in Izmit following the 1999 quake there, but also Stein's elegant model of how stress moves along fault lines. And he doesn't hide the anger in his voice when he talks about the main cause of death in that disaster: cheap construction.

Then it's off to Tornado Alley in the Midwestern United States, where we follow scientist Joshua Wurman and his crew as they try to get a radar's-eye view inside a tornado at the moment it forms. "It's incredibly difficult," Wurman says, but it could help scientists understand why only some storms spawn tornadoes -- and, someday, help them predict which ones will prove deadly. Meanwhile, here as in the other segments, we get a stunning combination of good science, interesting people, and breathtaking images.

Wurman, like Stein and Edmonds, is on a quest to understand something large, wonderful, and strange: nature itself. The large and wonderful achievement of "Forces of Nature" is that it helps us understand the passion and precision behind that quest.

Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com.

Forces of Nature
Directed by: George Casey
Written by: Mose Richards
Narrated by: Kevin Bacon
At: Mugar Omni Theater, Museum of Science
Running time: 40 minutes
Unrated (probably too intense for preschoolers)
***1/2