Deep Blue Movie Review:


More humans have travelled into space than to the deepest recesses of our oceans; we know more about the surface of the moon than about the seabeds! Filmed as a big-screen companion to the BBC's groundbreaking The Blue Planet series, this beautiful film takes a much artful approach than the series' educational style. It keeps information to a minimum we travel the globe to watch sea animals feeding on each other! Yes, it's all pretty grisly, but it's so astonishingly well-filmed that it carries us away with it.

We begin with an image of the earth as a watery planet, where most life exists under the seas. Leaping, racing dolphins serve as a host that connects the film's various segments. We see them diving into schools of fish to eat alongside sharks, birds and other predators. We watch killer whales stalk young seals and a baby grey whale (how politically incorrect are they?), polar bears trying to catch seals and beluga whales, and two coral reefs attacking each other like a scene from The Lord of the Rings. In between there are crabs, penguins, jellyfish and insanely freaky creatures from the deepest ocean depths, all going about the day-to-day business of survival. The only sign of human life is the tiny sub that takes us down into the dark trenches.

All of this is assembled with Gambon's mellifluous narration, which provides just enough background information so we know what we're watching, but not so much that we feel we're in school. And Fenton's accompanying score adds drama to the images (sometimes a bit too much, perhaps). The result is inventive and inspiring, and it really makes the most of amazing cinematography that puts us right into each scenario! There we are swimming with these tiny sardines as the shoal is decimated by predators from every side, we're trapped under the ice with belugas while a polar bear pounces on us from above, we're fighting for our lives when a family of orcas attacks us in the open sea. It's dramatic stuff, and the filmmakers startlingly bring to life the beauty and balance of nature, reminding us how important the ocean is to our survival on earth.

Rich Cline

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