Home Theater & Sound -- Deep Blue

Deep
Blue

June 2006

Format: DVD

(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment	Picture Quality
Packaged Extras	Sound Quality

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Narrated by: Pierce Brosnan Directed by: Andy Byatt, Alastair Fothergill	Theatrical Release: 2003 DVD Release: 2006 Released by: Miramax Home Entertainment Dolby Digital 5.1 Widescreen

The DVD release of Deep Blue has penguins on its cover, no doubt a nod to the success of March of the Penguins, which this year won the Oscar for Best Documentary. However, the BBC-made Deep Blue pre-dates Penguins and is about much more than life in the Antarctic. It documents our "blue planet," the water world that dominates Earth, and the violent quest for survival that governs the living beings that inhabit it.

More Undersea Adventures

For people of my generation, the name Jacques Cousteau conjures memories of a ship named Calypso populated with Frenchmen who took their scuba diving very seriously, spending what seemed like all of their waking time in wetsuits. Cousteau was a French naval officer who became a pioneer of underwater filmmaking. As an environmentalist, he remains a touchstone nearly a decade after his death. Cousteau's son Jean-Michel inherited his father's love of the sea and has carried on his work. Jean-Michel Cousteau Ocean Adventures takes up where The Undersea Adventures of Jacques Cousteau left off. In the series' first DVD release (***1/2), Jean-Michel and his crew explore one of the most remote Hawaiian islands, Kure, 1200 miles from Kauai. The island and its waters teem with diverse life that even in the middle of the Pacific Ocean cannot escape man's reach -- or pollution. As with Deep Blue, the widescreen video image is gorgeous. I wondered immediately if it was shot in HD. So far, there are only two hour-long Cousteau Ocean Adventures episodes on DVD, but more are planned.

...Marc Mickelson
marc@hometheatersound.com

As you might be able to guess, Deep Blue doesn't have a plot in the traditional sense. It is more a series of vignettes about different animals -- their existence and inherent beauty. Seeing dolphins dart through massive waves only to take on big air as they leap out of the water makes our puny human tricks seem all the more insignificant. The drama of the movie comes when predators are shown: sharks hunting reef fish at night, a polar bear stalking snow-white beluga whales at a breathing hole in the ice, killer whales exhausting a baby gray whale. All of this is conveyed through remarkable cinematography that will make you wonder how humans were able to capture it -- and live to tell the tale -- without disturbing the action.

The video image is stunning -- colorful and crisp -- and the sound is tastefully handled. Neither intrudes on and both enhance the experience of watching the movie. The only extra feature is a substantial making-of documentary that's almost as interesting as the movie itself.

Nature filmmaking doesn't get much better than this. Deep Blue is an affecting and majestic movie, not so much a film to learn from (though you will) but to be awed by. It is art as only nature can create it.

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