You've seen nature documentaries before but never any so strikingly beautiful as this.
It's a tour of the oceans, top and bottom, tropical and arctic. I have no idea of how the crew could have gotten some of these startlingly revealing shots. How, for instance, do you get close enough to a polar bear to film its attempt to catch a beluga whale without disturbing the bear itself? I mean, the bear can't be blind! Telephoto lenses, yes, but these images are crisp and clear, as if shot from ten feet away.
It's less "academic" than it is an aesthetic experience. No scientific names. Pierce Brosnan's sparse narration keeps us abreast of what we're watching and what's going on. That pile of big pebbles is actually a group of emperor penguins huddled together for warmth against the antarctic blizzard. You wouldn't know it without the narration, except that every once in a while a penguin's head pops up out of the gray pile and glances around for a few seconds.
The musical score is as lyrical and majestic as the visual imagery, which may be good or not so good, but it never becomes cloying. It resembles Debussy as impressionist, all about nature and movement.
If this had appeared in, say, 1968, the weed heads would have flocked to it. But these days they're all grown up and don't need to alter their state of consciousness to appreciate what they're witnessing. The film itself will take care of that.
It's in no way a tree-hugger movie. Well, Brosnan's narration ends with a question. Are we in the process of destroying this before we've come to understand it? It's a legitimate and completely non-political query.
It's a tour of the oceans, top and bottom, tropical and arctic. I have no idea of how the crew could have gotten some of these startlingly revealing shots. How, for instance, do you get close enough to a polar bear to film its attempt to catch a beluga whale without disturbing the bear itself? I mean, the bear can't be blind! Telephoto lenses, yes, but these images are crisp and clear, as if shot from ten feet away.
It's less "academic" than it is an aesthetic experience. No scientific names. Pierce Brosnan's sparse narration keeps us abreast of what we're watching and what's going on. That pile of big pebbles is actually a group of emperor penguins huddled together for warmth against the antarctic blizzard. You wouldn't know it without the narration, except that every once in a while a penguin's head pops up out of the gray pile and glances around for a few seconds.
The musical score is as lyrical and majestic as the visual imagery, which may be good or not so good, but it never becomes cloying. It resembles Debussy as impressionist, all about nature and movement.
If this had appeared in, say, 1968, the weed heads would have flocked to it. But these days they're all grown up and don't need to alter their state of consciousness to appreciate what they're witnessing. The film itself will take care of that.
It's in no way a tree-hugger movie. Well, Brosnan's narration ends with a question. Are we in the process of destroying this before we've come to understand it? It's a legitimate and completely non-political query.