Jonathan Last has high praise indeed <a title=”Into the Deep” href=”http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/656fzdqj.asp”>for Deep Blue, coming soon to a theater in your area:
If you find yourself yearning for a bit of real magic after sitting through Revenge of the Sith, George Lucas’s computer-generated confection, you should keep an eye on your local theater for Deep Blue.
A documentary directed by Andy Byatt and the wonderfully named Alastair Fothergill for the BBC, Deep Blue is only now seeping out into release in the United States. Showings begin in major cities in the coming weeks and, if the movie proves successful, Miramax will no doubt book it out into the hinterlands. If you should be lucky enough to have Deep Blue showing in your neck of the woods, you’d be a fool to miss it.
Deep Blue is a return to the great oceanographic documentaries of yesteryear, but Byatt and Fothergill avoid all hints of Steve Zissou-ism. No humans appear on camera and the narration is sparse (the U.S. release is voiced by Pierce Brosnan), giving us only the barest outlines of context. In Deep Blue, the camera speaks for itself.
What results are some of the most astonishing images you will ever see onscreen. From the first moments of the film as dolphins body-surf and then hurdle big waves to the ghostly scene of a jellyfish swarm to the haunting and terrifying shot of hundreds of hammerhead sharks congregating under the moonlight, Deep Blue outclasses any spectacle you’ll see at the movies this summer.
He also links to the film’s trailer, adding, “As Byatt and Fothergill demonstrate, the most special effects are real”.
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