A study in self-aggrandizement and amateur science

tinisoli

This film is ostensibly about the overfishing of sharks and what that may mean for shark populations and marine ecology, but within the first few minutes of the film you realize that "Sharkwater" is largely about writer/director/producer Rob Stewart and how heroic and unique he fancies himself to be. One of the first sequences is a long shot of a bronzed, shirtless Stewart strolling along a tropical beach, fresh from a snorkel, while the narrator (Stewart, naturally) describes how he's always loved sharks, always been fascinated by them, blah blah blah.

Now, there's nothing wrong with liking sharks. I was a passionate elasmophile as a kid, and I cultivated that interest through a biology degree, a shark research internship, and various fisheries-related jobs both in the U.S. and abroad. In the age of Cousteau, "Jaws", National Geographic, and the Discovery Channel, there have been tens of thousands of shark fanatics, and indeed there has been a sea change in popular opinion about sharks. The evidence of this is everywhere, despite the mainstream media's steadfast insistence on maintaining the more sensational and macabre elements of shark attack news coverage. But somehow Stewart has convinced himself that his interest in sharks, his efforts to conserve them, and his perspective on shark mythology are unique and profound whereas most people (except for Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd staff) are ineffectual morons still clinging to myths of sharks as vicious maneaters. This is both wildly ignorant of the last twenty years of shark biology and conservation efforts, and insulting to the many people around the world who are more experienced and knowledgeable than Stewart.

What's more repellent than Stewart's delusional lone-savior persona (reminiscent of Timothy Treadwell in Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man") is that he felt the need to insert himself into his film to such a stunningly narcissistic degree. The climax of "Sharkwater" comes when Stewart is laid up in a Central American hospital with what he describes as a life-threatening case of staph infection, or "flesh-eating disease." We see him lying in bed--I'm guessing it's a reenactment, as he's wearing a clean orange polo shirt, not a hospital gown--phoning his mother to assure her that everything's going to be okay. He's looking grim and bummed out, but he's still tanned, well-coiffed, and is obviously thinking about the camera that's on him. What happens next? Stewart literally wills his infection away so he can go back to Costa Rica, back to Cocos Island where the film began, to help his beloved cartilaginous friends. I'm not kidding. And neither is Stewart. His love for sharks simply defeats the bacterial infection that had threatened his life and limb.

Okay, I thought. Surely there's got to be some good reason for Stewart to be going back to Costa Rica, where he's wanted by the police for his involvement in Sea Shepherd's altercation with a fishing boat illegally fishing for sharks. Surely it must be vital to the narrative of this film for him to will away (!) a bacterial infection that supposedly was going to claim his left leg. Surely he's going to firebomb the illegal shark-fin processing plant or sink the shark-finning fleet, and that'll justify all the effort. I mean, there's gotta be some kind of payoff... Right?

Nope. The reason Stewart has to get back to Cocos is...to go for a swim with sharks. In a Speedo. I'm not kidding. The final sequence shows our hero freediving (he lowers his heart rate to 40bpm so that the sharks will not be afraid of him) in a banana sling with some sharks. Why was this so important? Who knows. Stewart seems to think that simply communing with sharks (which in an earlier scene includes grabbing hold of one and lovingly stroking its flank) is helpful to their cause. Again, this kind of behavior is eerily familiar if you've seen "Grizzly Man" in which Tim Treadwell says "I love you, I love you, I love you" to several indifferent bears. And there's plenty of pedestrian talk about the "balance" in the seas, and how sharks have been "gods for 400 million years," with ludicrous design-oriented language about how sharks have shaped the evolution of the seas. This is high school level stuff.

I'll give Stewart some credit--hence the rating of 2 rather than 1--because he assembles some compellingly gruesome footage of shark finning (and beheading and gutting) to drive home the point of finning's barbaric, wasteful nature. There's also some pretty HD footage of whales, turtles, sharks and other charismatic marine megafauna, but nothing we haven't seen before in "Blue Planet" or other productions. But even the lush scenery is spoiled. Several times, Stewart actually turns his camera around underwater so we can see him, as though his presence amongst the sea's inhabitants is itself vital to the "balance in the seas" that he longs to preserve or reestablish.

"Sharkwater" could've been an objective, hard-hitting exposé of the shark finning industry and an investigation into the complicity of corrupt government. Instead it's an accidental study in self-aggrandizement and amateur science.

score 2/10

tinisoli 9 March 2007

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1616975/