"Ocean" is a movie worthy of respect. It is another work of the French documentary director Jacques Behan following the world-renowned "Micro World" and "Migrating Birds". In 4 and a half years, the world's most professional underwater shooting team was used to finally present the splendid and colorful underwater world on the big screen. This is a film that is almost impeccable in terms of audiovisual, and every frame of film is flaunting the expensiveness behind its gorgeousness. It is a blessing to be able to see such a pure and natural movie in Chinese theaters. However, the sincerity of production and the final effect may not necessarily be proportional, because the level of performance here is an unpredictable variable. "Ocean" is unqualified as a documentary, and there is a big gap between Jacques Behan's first two works. The structure is disorganized, the narration is weak, and the context is not clear. It seems to be the result of the disorderly arrangement of the manuscripts blown away by the wind. Although a very ambitious environmental protection theme was deducted, I did not see the progress of the theme being strengthened and deepened in the progress of the narration. Most of the time, it was just a simple listing and display of the underwater wonders. The function of the environmental protection theme is only to shoot the material. It's just a series connection, and the connection and transition of this series connection are very blunt. This is obviously not enough for a 100-minute movie. The visual experience of this theme can be obtained by reading National Geographic Magazine. The most serious problem of "Ocean" is that I can’t feel the creator’s love for the subject. I’m just selling animal images. As the animals appear without subtitles to explain the names of the animals, it’s hard for the audience to feel a sense of belonging to the animals, but they just leave behind. A general impression of the beauty of marine life. These animals are actually the protagonists of this movie, and they should be respected enough. The audience should be able to keep several amazing animals in the memory for a long time through their names, so that they can become the medium for us to feel and reminisce about the magical nature of nature. This sense of belonging is actually very important. In fact, in the American and Japanese versions of the film, there are explanatory texts when animals appear. Unfortunately, these basic information are ignored in the Chinese version. "Ocean" was released in the mainland on August 12, and only got 2 million box office in the first week, but the high attendance rate and good word of mouth made the film's second week box office rise against the trend, reaching 6.2 million. It entered commercial theaters before. His documentary was Jia Zhangke's "Legend of the Sea" last year, which suffered a disastrous box office loss. For the Chinese film market, which lacks a successful documentary operation model, the commercial success of "Ocean" has meaning beyond the film itself, and as a result, more foreign high-quality documentaries may be accepted. Introducing it to cultivate a fixed audience of documentary films in first-tier cities will be a good opportunity for domestic documentaries to commercialize. Of course, "Ocean", a product of large-scale capital operation, will certainly not be the direction of Chinese documentary development in the future. 【Global Times】
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