Oceans

Documentary filmmakers Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud, producers of an exhilarating masterpiece in Winged Migration, have turned their exquisitely heightened sensibilities to marine life around the world, both above and below oceanic surfaces. Their new film makes good on its comparison of underwater exploration with ventures into outer space. The images of marine life “galaxies” are stunningly effective, visually and metaphorically, and many of the marvelous close views of exotic creatures underwater have a surreal, other-worldly beauty. The voice-over narration, read with stoic grace by Pierce Brosnan, is an understated blend of poetic reverie and documentary statement, and it does help situate all the visual glories within the filmmakers’ abiding environmentalist/ preservationist perspectives. As such, Oceans doesn’t match Winged Migration for epic splendor, but it does work similar small wonders in its gestures of ecological re-orientation. Tinseltown. Rated G