Oceans, though a documentary, is also quite a typical French movie in that it is confounding, since the French seem to celebrate the abstract. My reaction at the end of a few French movies has been "WTF."
I initially expected this to be an ecological "save our oceans" movies, but the first half of the movie played more like a "mysteries of the ocean" visual extravaganza in which they showed many creatures and sights I'd never seen before. Gorgeous.
All of a sudden it switches to highlighting the cruelty of man, with many bloody scenes such as live sharks having their fins cut off and being tossed back into the ocean to starve to death. And then it concludes with the expected "save our oceans" spiel, which I have to say is a whole lot less interesting than the rest of the movie. And not very motivating either. At the end of An Inconvenient Truth, I felt like I had to go out to do something to help save the world (I didn't but still), whereas Oceans left me mostly apathetic.
What this movie feels like is a string of visually spectacular clips of marine life, tied together as best they could by its directors into a barely-cohesive documentary. Its messages come across as incidental and unavoidable: "Well since we have these gory/sad clips anyway and since all documentaries about nature have to chastise humans."
It's not a bad watch if you're into nature documentaries but you're ambivalent, you might as well stay home and watch The Discovery Channel.
I initially expected this to be an ecological "save our oceans" movies, but the first half of the movie played more like a "mysteries of the ocean" visual extravaganza in which they showed many creatures and sights I'd never seen before. Gorgeous.
All of a sudden it switches to highlighting the cruelty of man, with many bloody scenes such as live sharks having their fins cut off and being tossed back into the ocean to starve to death. And then it concludes with the expected "save our oceans" spiel, which I have to say is a whole lot less interesting than the rest of the movie. And not very motivating either. At the end of An Inconvenient Truth, I felt like I had to go out to do something to help save the world (I didn't but still), whereas Oceans left me mostly apathetic.
What this movie feels like is a string of visually spectacular clips of marine life, tied together as best they could by its directors into a barely-cohesive documentary. Its messages come across as incidental and unavoidable: "Well since we have these gory/sad clips anyway and since all documentaries about nature have to chastise humans."
It's not a bad watch if you're into nature documentaries but you're ambivalent, you might as well stay home and watch The Discovery Channel.