Directors-writers-editors-composers Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas don’t show us sardines ingesting phytoplankton, but do sate our curiosity about a plethora of predators ingesting sardines off the coast of South Africa. Marvel at sharks, seals, superpods of squeaking dolphins and, coolest of all, the divebombing gannets.
Sardines mass and swirl like vast quicksilver disco balls that can disorient their underwater predators. But not the wily gannets. Plunging deep into shoals of silvery sardines, they leave plumes of bubbles. Cresswell and McNicholas, makers of the 2002 Imax doc “Pulse: A Stomp Odyssey,” here edit a percussive rhapsody on this
immersive blitzkrieg of biomass. The 3D effect works especially well beneath the surface. The murk of the water lends a solidity not seen when the camera surfaces. The tossed-off terrestial scenes suffer from the usual 3D look of pop-up figures standing in separate planes. Under one-hundreth of one percent of the world’s ocean area is protected as a marine reserve, narrates South African playwright John Kani. With a vaguely green agenda, his toothless script names no multi-national corporations or regional geopoliticians as over-fishing ocean-haters. 40m. (Bill Stamets)
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