Ocean with David Attenborough – Film Review
by Frank L.

Ocean with David Attenborough screens at the IFI on Thursday, May 8th and Sunday, May 11th.

Directors – Colin Butfield, Toby Nowlan, Keith Scholey
Star – David Attenborough

World Oceans Day takes place on 8th June annually, and this year it precedes the 2025 UN Ocean Conference to be held in Nice. This film will be screened today (May 8th) at the IFI, and by a happy coincidence, the evergreen David Attenborough will reach 99 years of age on 8th May 2025. Over many decades in various media, Attenborough has brought the majesty and mystery of the natural world into the comparatively sedentary lives of his human audience. Attenborough was always conscious that the selfish behaviour of humans was a danger to all living creatures and to the sustainability of the natural world.

The natural world about which he has been primarily talking is the terrestrial one. He now turns his enquiring mind to the great aquatic mass which covers more than two-thirds of the earth’s surface. It is a wilderness which remains largely unexplored by man, but man’s unthinking and selfish behaviour has endangered and continues to wreak havoc below the surface of the water.

This film, by use of magnificent camera work, attempts to realise on screen the sheer enormity of the oceans. Man, as represented by Attenborough as he stands on the shoreline or on top of a cliff, is a puny organism against the vast sweep of the ocean. The camera work shows the wanton destruction man’s behaviour through climate change, for instance, has caused to the coral reefs, but also the direct damage that man’s industrial fishing methods have made to the fabric of the sea bed, transforming them into wastelands. It is not pretty. But it is not all doom and gloom. Attenborough shows, in contrast, how man, if he moderates his behaviour, can help the oceans to reinstate areas he has so damaged, but it is vital that man must undertake change.

Apart from the commentary by Attenborough, there is a fine atmospheric score by Steven Price which adds to the sense of majesty and mystery of what lies beneath the surface of the oceans. The cinematography, the music and Attenborough’s commentary provide a fascinating and educational piece of cinema. Attenborough is an educator and entertainer of the first rank, and Ocean is a film which will benefit all. It is a fine achievement.