The blue whale, this giant of the seas, is an endangered species. Overhunted for too long, it may be protected, but its meat can be found on Japanese markets. It may be immense, but it is no match for ever-larger, ever more numerous ships. Protecting them is a challenge that a certain number of specialists are trying to meet. A team of three of them, featured in the film, spend several weeks in the Santa Barbara Channel, one of the blue whale's larders. Their objective? To discover the place where they give birth to their calves, thereby establishing the route they follow so that they can better protect them in the future.
This is what "The Kingdom of the Blue Whale" undertakes to illustrate, but it does not do it in the way of a classic documentary, which is a good idea insofar as 1 hour and 33 minutes of pure pedagogy might well be tiring!. To avoid boredom, Sue Houghton, the director, has in fact had the excellent idea to resort to the thriller form . How does she go about getting the spectator hooked (pun intended)? Well, a riddle is asked at a time (for example: will the three specialists be able to locate the spot where the blue whale will give birth to its calf?) but the key to the puzzle will not be given before a number of twists and turns have happened to the protagonists. Such is the task assigned to he narrator, Tom Selleck ( no less): he duly asks a question with an unknown answer, tension builds up and interest is kept sustained. Among the other suspense-inducing questions: where do the whales go when they leave the Santa Barbara Canal ? Why so many dead whales ? Why can blue whale meat still be found on certain Japanese markets while the species is protected, will our three heroes succeed in filming for the first time the birth of a whale calf) ?
The advantage of this method is that it makes the medicine go down easily, despite the film's unusual length and for all its redundancies, banalities or filling scenes. To say nothing of the music, which is regrettably all-purpose. But as the whole is well filmed and very interesting from a documentary point of view, the small flaws noted will not prevent you from thinking that the time spent in the company of these benevolent hunters and peaceful monsters was not wasted.
4 Reviews
Pride...
RosanaBotafogo17 April 2023
Documentary Add a storyline in your language Supported by the National Geographic Society, the world's leading blue whale scientists embark on a game-changing mission: to track the migration of blue whales to the unknown and long-sought-after location where they give birth.
Beautiful documentary about blue whales, scientists are mapping, with the introduction of chips in the whales, to verify their routine, what they do until maternity, trying to break three theories, the first one that they feed during the whole journey and not just at the destination, place of mating and nursery, their musicality and dialogue with each other, studies with the aim of protection and even changing ship routes to protect the baby whale, so beautiful and necessary... Pride...
Beautiful documentary about blue whales, scientists are mapping, with the introduction of chips in the whales, to verify their routine, what they do until maternity, trying to break three theories, the first one that they feed during the whole journey and not just at the destination, place of mating and nursery, their musicality and dialogue with each other, studies with the aim of protection and even changing ship routes to protect the baby whale, so beautiful and necessary... Pride...
Beautiful and informative
ddddiy4 December 2019
This documentary was both beautiful and informative. The main focus of this documentary was to follow blue whales through their migration patterns and needless to say it was intriguing to see how these beautiful creatures behave and interact throughout their journey. Another important topic throughout the documentary is illegal fishing and selling of blue whales. Developing technology help the scientist learn about whales to eventually help keep them safe.
A whale of a disappointment
JakeBrinkman3 September 2021
This documentary has about 45 minutes of information stretched into 1.5 hours, and it still manages to leave more questions than it answers. The documentary supplied zero information on the possibilities of changing ship noises to alert whales without being a nuisance, the results of the inner ear studies, the "fetal folds" that were apparently the primary reason for photographing the calf, or whatever super interesting-looking stuff the meat market scientists were talking about while the narrator talked over them with only quasi-related facts.
I understand that they were trying to film something that hasn't been filmed before, but they had way too much cheesy CGI and hardly any actual footage or images. And the lack of a camera gyro made nearly every video seasickening to watch. The BBC is much more patient about taking years to craft a high quality story with high quality footage, so there's no reason for NatGeo to lower the bar. These things make the documentary feel very rushed, giving the impression that NatGeo was much more concerned with being the first than they were about giving the animals and researchers the respect that they deserved.
I understand that they were trying to film something that hasn't been filmed before, but they had way too much cheesy CGI and hardly any actual footage or images. And the lack of a camera gyro made nearly every video seasickening to watch. The BBC is much more patient about taking years to craft a high quality story with high quality footage, so there's no reason for NatGeo to lower the bar. These things make the documentary feel very rushed, giving the impression that NatGeo was much more concerned with being the first than they were about giving the animals and researchers the respect that they deserved.
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