Review: Deep Blue

Deep Blue announces itself as the Lord of the Rings of nature documentaries.

Deep Blue
Photo: Miramax Films

Boasting 3-D-friendly images of fish, trenches, and coral reef, breathless Pierce Brosnan narration along the lines of “jellyfish trail their deadly tentacles behind their piercing bodies,” and a musical composition for every creature that scurries across the frame (anxious sand crabs boogie to south-of-the-border beats), Deep Blue announces itself as the Lord of the Rings of nature documentaries. In the film’s most breathtaking sequence, fish maddeningly swarm around each other in an attempt to avoid being eaten by gravity-defying albatross, seals, and sharks. There’s poetry in seeing each predator join the feeding frenzy, but the film—which claims to advocate a so-called vision of a “consistent cycle of life, death, and renewal”—not only lacks the focus of Luc Jacquet’s March of the Penguins but it’s consistently oversold by Brosnan’s hyperbolic narration. Though the sermon that closes the film is commendable—it advises us to understand the creatures that lurk in the world’s deep blue seas before we further destroy the environment—it feels tacked-on, mainly because directors Alastair Fothergill and Andy Byatt appear to consider the film’s potential box office more seriously than Mother Nature’s sensitive ecology. From the clouds above the ocean’s surface to the lowest depths of the Marians Trench (the outskirts of which are simulated using obvious special effects), Fothergill’s underwater camera appears as if it’s working its way into the depths of Mount Doom; the music is appropriately sinister, as is the alien species of fish with big Gollum-like eyes that populate the area. In this way, Mother Nature reveals herself not so much as an entity that needs to be preserved but an action director much fiercer than Michael Bay.

Score: 
 Cast: Pierce Brosnan  Director: Alastair Fothergill, Andy Byatt  Distributor: Miramax Films  Running Time: 91 min  Rating: G  Year: 2003  Buy: Video, Soundtrack

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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