“Chasing Coral” bucks the usual enviro-documentary setup between the beauty of nature and the greed of man. It spends as much camera time and empathy on the divers and scientists researching the coral as it does on the coral itself. Director Jeff Orlowski recycles similar tactics from his previous documentary “Chasing Ice,” and follows humans at their most admirable: as explorers, researchers and inventors. As the team documents global coral bleaching, each member explains the science in clear, accessible ways.
“We look at climate change as if it’s an issue in the air,” said Richard Vevers, founder and CEO of The Ocean Agency, “and you go one or two degrees celsius, does that really matter? But when you talk about the ocean, it’s like your body temperature changing.”
We learn background information through casual, grim conversations between fellow scientists and enthusiasts, but a self-proclaimed coral nerd (he goes by @coral_buff on Twitter) named Zackary Rago cheers us up. Zack’s introduction cuts to a teammate with a look of disbelief. “He [Zack] just loves coral, even to the point where he has coral reef tanks at his house with no fish in them. And nobody has coral reef tanks with no fish in them.”
Every ominous statistic sets up the test of the team’s problem-solving abilities. We watch as they struggle to get their equipment under weight limits at the airport and learn sign language to communicate as they install cameras underwater. We watch them worry about incoming thunderstorms as Orlowski floats in the ocean munching a sandwich and share their frustration when water floods an electronics box.
The documentary includes astounding microscopic shots of moving coral and seamless transitions as the cameras pass underwater, meaning the reefs never play sidekick to the humans, either. And the amount of time spent above sea level means “Chasing Coral” avoids the blue fatigue of most ocean documentaries.
Eventually, time constraints force the team to shoot time lapses manually, every single day. They create markings for their tripods on the ocean floor for over sixty sights, bring laminated photographs from previous days down on their dives to match the next ones, and spend four hours underwater daily, fighting the current for their shots. The manual work forces Zack to watch coral die day by day. When the survey ends, Zack is actually happy to leave a reef.
“Cause it’s just so miserable here,” he says, but as his plane takes off, we see him looking down at the reef through the window.
The film doesn’t shy from the severity of the problem (the reefs could be gone in Zack’s lifetime) but Orlowski doesn’t preach to the choir. He intended “Chasing Coral” to sway, not alienate skeptics. The last line of the credits states: “This film is dedicated to all the young people who can and will make a difference.” We will need them.
Orlowski has made an informative, moving, and incredibly de-politicized documentary. He wants environmental movements to emphasize technological innovation instead of self-sacrifice, and pragmatists will find his ideas easy to rally behind.
Written by Elle Friedle
Elle Friedle is a writing major and sequential minor at SCAD. She denies ever crying in MoMA.
