OCEANS

France, 2009, 84 minutes, Colour.
Narrator, English, Pierce Brosnan; French Jacques Perrin.
Directed by Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud.

This is a documentary where the audience is invited to sit back, gaze and contemplate. The cinematography is beautiful, finely lit even in the depths of the sea. The directors made the parallel documentary on birds, Winged Migration, and Jacques Perrin produced the fascinating contemplation of our world, Microcosmos.

That said, Oceans is something of a strange film. There is no narrative thread. There is no particular logic as to why one scene follows another. It is more like a moving picture jigsaw showing the life that dwells (generally) under water. There is a commentary (which on the whole does not need to be listened to) which identifies some of the extraordinary creatures we are looking at in close-up or names some of the places where filming is being done. It is interesting to hear some of the names but most of us would not pass a test remembering them as we left the theatre. A personal preference would have been not to listen to the commentary, though it is quietly and smoothly spoken by Pierce Brosnan for the English version, but just look and go with the flow of the musical score – which, with its lulls and its poundings, provides some kind of indications for our responses.

There are certainly some exquisite and exotic creatures whom we never see except in films like this. Some look prehistoric (the dugong and some fish whose shapes, colours, extensions look straight out of computer generated fantasies). One can see why the sea lions survive - they are so lazy, placid and restful that nothing much disturbs them. While nature on earth is red in tooth and claw, under the water and over the water there is no blood but plenty of fish eat fish and swooping birds beaking fish (and baby turtles), the eternal food chain.

One wonders during the film how the photographers managed to be close to whales as the surfaced and rose so high, follow schools of leaping dolphins, be among the ravenous birds swooping below the surface, and not disturb the wonderful shoals of fish or the platoons of military crabs. While most patrons anticipating the appearance of a word which means credits are beginning and they can’t get away from what they have been contemplating fast enough, for those who stay, there are more amazing shots: of the photographers and their range of cameras as they film close to the fish. So, that is how it was done.

As for any explanations of what oceans are, despite Mr Brosnan’s asking us, there are no real answers, very little science for us to chew over and, what seems rather fatuous after the mysteries that we have been made privy to, he suggests that the real question is really, ‘who are we’. I don’t think so.

Magnificence for the eyes – bypass the commentary.