“Oceans” takes Planet-Earth visuals into the big blue

From the French film-makers who created the 2001 Oscar-winning documentary “Winged Migration” comes Disney’s next documentary “Oceans” following BBC’s “Planet Earth” series and their last documentary “Earth”. The film though does not follow in the footsteps of Planet Earth, which set the bar pretty high for other documentaries.

The film begins with what can be classified as a typical school of sardines swimming in a tightly bound mass. A flock of sea birds from above the surface begin dive-bombing into the ocean tucking their wings to catch the sardines like flying arrows, after which a pod of dolphins join the party. Later a shiver of sharks arrive at the buffet before a whale appears and crashes the whole party, all the while Pierce Brosnan narrates “the ocean smiles at the sky”.

“Oceans” is a visual masterpiece with no education or interesting facts to explain the beauty, which makes for an awesome one-and-a-half hour screensaver. The film dips haphazardly into the ocean for awesome shots of the ocean’s oddities without much worthy naration.

Weaved into the visuals though is an environmental message about the destruction of the planet including visuals of fishing nets and pollution, the most sobering of which is a scene of sewerage flowing into the open ocean from city rivers.

“Oceans” visuals though are perhaps some of the most beautiful ever shot making its R749 well worth the investment. The film will be release on the 8th of June 2010.