It hasn’t been an excellent month for the US, a minimum of in the event you help the Democratic social gathering. Donald Trump’s election victory has put an excellent large query mark over your entire nation and collective anxiousness has spiked. Individuals desperately must be soothed by one thing. I don’t find out about you, however my go-to in instances like these has at all times been sea-based wildlife documentaries. With their mixture of wub-wub noises and near-ambient underwater images, it’s the closest you may get to a mind therapeutic massage.
However Netflix is aware of that, this time, a fantastically shot deep-sea wildlife documentary simply isn’t going to chop it. No, that is critical. And that’s the reason it has launched Our Oceans: a fantastically shot deep-sea wildlife documentary narrated by Barack Obama.
Superficially, the sequence is the newest providing from the Obamas’ rising content material farm, which has already given us the pleasant animated present Waffles + Mochi and the midlife-crisis nightmare gas that was Renegades, the podcast Obama hosted with Bruce Springsteen. However in the event you voted for or supported the Democrats this month, Our Oceans mainly qualifies as sensory remedy.
With every episode devoted to one of many planet’s 5 oceans, the sequence is in the beginning jaw-dropping. As a lot as its starry narrator will seize the headlines, the images is the star right here. It’s crisp, intimate and reveals you the acquainted in unfamiliar methods. It’s particularly good at demonstrating scale. When the main target shifts to a manta ray or a whale shark, it shoots the animal from under, making it appear like a geometrical monolith in contrast with the opposite creatures swimming round it. It offers within the type of awestruck majesty James Cameron was aiming for with the final Avatar movie, solely that is actual.
It additionally succeeds at crafting narratives. We watch a pod of younger orcas practice to raid a seashore and it seems like one thing from High Gun. Whales plotting a raid on a salmon fishery? Ocean’s Eleven. Then there’s the sequence of a bioluminescent feeding frenzy off the coast of Los Angeles, which is likely to be the one most lovely factor you will note all 12 months.
For essentially the most half, Obama acquits himself properly in his new position. His voice, which has at all times been regular and soothing, was made for this. (Are you able to think about another high-level US politician pulling it off? Would narration maintain George W Bush’s consideration? Would Joe Biden’s narration maintain ours? Does Trump know what a fish is?)
This doesn’t imply that Obama is the brand new David Attenborough, after all. Attenborough is a profession naturalist who nearly single-handedly created the style of wildlife tv. Barack Obama is right here to emote about dolphins. He isn’t helped by the script, which typically appears to underestimate the intelligence of its viewers. It’s too folksy, describing the clownfish as “the world’s most well-known fish”, presumably as a result of there’s a movie franchise that stars the species. Throughout a sequence about cuttlefish, Obama growls: “Don’t make him offended; you wouldn’t like him when he’s offended.” At one level, he namechecks Homicide on the Dancefloor. At one other, he makes use of the phrase “fishnado”. Attenborough would by no means.
Nonetheless, all this pandering is simply sweetener to get you thru the door. The explanation the Obamas put their identify to Our Ocean swims slightly below the floor. Each time we meet an thrilling animal, we’re instructed precisely how humankind threatens it. Humanity is essentially an unseen power right here, butchering and depleting, introducing invasive species and heating oceans to the purpose of demise. That is an advocacy sequence in disguise – and a vital one.
However, for now, let’s simply deal with what is correct in entrance of us. Our Oceans is popping out proper when half of the US wants it most. If something goes to get these individuals by means of the following few weeks, it’s going to be Obama and whale tune.
Supply hyperlink
