While covering the various scientific anomalies in terms of geology, biology, oceanography, and so forth of the biggest ocean on Earth (a quarter of the Earth’s water supply), Wild Pacific is more or less up to the challenge. Granted, it only covers the lower half of the ocean (I suppose that the northern parts up near Japan were insufficiently wild), and doesn’t exactly try to give us the entire natural history of the region, but you still can’t help but admire the show’s ambition, or think that there’s potential for further installments.
Wild Pacific is a six hour BBC Earth documentary on, you guessed it , the Pacific Ocean, which is a rather difficult topic to cover, as the ocean is so gargantuan in its size, and is so lightly populated with people; the area that this documentary covers is made of thousands of tiny islands, the kind with the single palm trees that cartoon characters are always getting stuck on. Instead of trying to create some overarching narrative by fixing itself on a single event (such as a migration) or population, Pacific divides itself into six sections, each focusing on a different aspect of the ocean, ranging from volcanic events to the cultural practices of the island dwellers to the mating habits of any number of bugs (there are a whole lot of mating bugs in this thing). It gives the whole thing sort of a schizophrenic feeling, as one could easily watch only one episode and not miss any aspect of the big picture, but all in all, that’s probably for the best, as anything that tried to be more cohesive than this would have made it at least ten hours long.
But I’m certain that the question on everyone’s mind isn’t the story (though there are a number of interesting ones, with a village’s ongoing problems with crocodiles being my personal favorite), it’s the photography, and I can happily say that it delivers. There are the big shots (the helicopter shots over the islands, the whales, the waves crashing from underwater), and there are the small shots (the bugs mating, the birds mating), both of which are shot with a stunning degree of focus and perspective. And then there’s the fact that it’s hard to tell how they even got some of these shots in the first place. I mean, I suppose it’s possible to imagine how they were able to get close-ups of crocodiles and sharks (they have cages that photographers can stay in safely while shooting things like that, I think), but there’s one shot in here where they literally track lava. You heard that right. As a thin sliver of lava pours out from a volcano into the ocean, cools, and then petrifies and blackens, the camera literally tracks back from right in front of the lava. I could hardly believe it while I was watching it. It put every single Sam Raimi tracking shot I’ve ever seen to absolute shame. It was insane.
In case I haven’t made it clear yet, the photography in Wild Pacific is really impressive, but that might be the only real attraction for the viewer not interested in nature documentaries. Unlike a number of pieces on the Serengeti or such, Wild Pacific contains little in the way of animals killing each other, and the bizarre spectacle of mating insects is somewhat less hilarious than when, say, chimps do it. But this should by no means dissuade the curious, even if you’re only interested in the lava shot (it’s in one of the middle episodes).
DVD Bonus Features
Each episode also contains a ten minute making of video diary, in which the filmmakers document themselves in the production process. Most of it’s neat (the crocodile story is in one these segments), and it certainly doesn’t take away from the program, but it deepens our understanding of the production process rather than the subject. Which isn’t, you know, a bad thing.
"Wild Pacific" is on sale July 14, 2009 and is rated NR. Documentary. Directed by Chiara Bellati, Jonathan Clay, Mark Brownlow. Written by Various. Starring Various.
