The Blue Planet Movie Review

Every day has a cadence. Certain events occur at different times of the day. The glowing sun rises and our world awakens, ready to function again. Day fades into night and quiet fades in. Different points throughout the day have different textures with elements unique only to that moment in time. Crickets chirp under the moonlight while families eat dinner at sunset. Mourning doves coo at sunrise while traffic blares during daytime. We take this ambience for granted and yet we can't deny the natural order of it all. If I'm paying enough attention, I can notice the auditory layers of any given time of day. The Blue Planet was a lovely meditation on the evolution of our environment. In an hour and twenty minutes, I was taken on a voyage through nature and back into civilization. I appreciated the substance imbued into each shot. Under different circumstances, watching a river flow or a family sleeping would've been calming or even boring. In this movie, however, there was a cohesive quality attached. We began at a frozen lake and melted into water, quickly evaporating into clouds. From here on out, the fibers of our being were molded into new creations.

I will admit the sounds of nature alone were nice to listen to. What elevated them more was their visual arrangement. It didn't need big effects or wild plot twists to be engaging. Not everyone will vibe with this style of filmmaking. Some may want to turn off their TV after a few minutes out of boredom. I feel like what separated this movie from other arthouse ones was its ability to give dimensionality to its source material. I want to care about what I'm watching and not just feel listless. Observational cinematography works if done well. As with Piavoli's other movie Voices Through Time, there were a few scenes with dialogue in Italian I couldn't understand. Thankfully, I didn't need to understand anything more than the visual context. The fabric of these scenes was already lush and grounded. In fact, the director crafted a dual threat of visual and auditory stimulation. I don't know if he just let his actors improvise or what, but they figured out a way to make their interactions feel lived in. During this cinematic voyage, I felt secure. By focusing on the finer details, Piavoli made each passing minute all the more exciting. There was what I could see and then there was what I could feel. If anything, I could sense hidden messages beyond my cognition. I was connected to a heavenly, dream-like world through a screen, and I wanted to be in it. Recognizing the beauty of our collective reality is what makes us human. Our society functions around a biological clock based in hours. We're generally active during daytime and winding down during nighttime. Just like the movie, we construct ourselves and deconstruct in quiet, daily cycles. We may feel emotional for whatever reason and that's okay. It's all a part of living anyway. Laughter, joy, sadness — they are smaller tones of a larger composition. The Blue Planet was a didactic sensory immersion, showing nature as it was, is, and always has been. Call it a tribute to mankind or a monument of grace. Either way, I was entranced by what I watched. I felt an indescribable magic to every minute of it. Like, I was an artifact of the actual movie, constantly being shifted around. Less was more — intentional observation was our key narrative device. Silence was golden and rewarded with an assembled narrative puzzle by the end. Franco Piavoli didn't make a film so much as he captured a feeling — one that lingers long after the screen goes dark.