Atlantis

In the mid-1980's I spent my youth at the Palace of dreams, Valhalla. A classic art deco independent cinema in the suburb of Glebe, Sydney Australia. The doors close in late February 1999, so I decided to pay my respects and dragged the children to see this underwater visual delight. A homage to the sea creatures of the universe with no occurring theme, only stunning images and a few humorous moments from the cheeky Besson. Serra's music works a treat here. Maybe twenty minutes too long.

My first inclination was to assume Atlantis was done with CGI. But then I came across the year it was made and realized that the technology didn't yet exist in 1991. We were still at the level of "The Mind's Eye" then, an experimental cartoonish attempt at computer animation in a video set to techno and released at Radio Shack if you remember. No, this is real footage, and it is perfect and amazing. It certainly isn't something I could sit through at a theater, but is suitable for meditation and falling asleep. There is no dialog, putting the movie in the same genre as "Samsara" and "Baraka", but a completely underwater experience. The symphonic and ambient music is very easy to listen to, but if it isn't your thing you can always just turn the volume off and play your own music. It's an incredible accomplishment in cinematography and something you can keep around to play at bed time.

I was a fan of Luc Besson since 1997, when I saw "Léon". And since I saw that movie, I scoured every video store looking for his films. Some were easy to find (The Fifth Element and Nikita were broadcasted), some weren't ("Subway" and "The Big Blue" had to be imported). Atlantis was the kind of movie I never expected to get my hands on. So you can see what I looked like when a German site had the video on stock. I waited two long months, expecting to see that movie I always wanted to see. When the movie finally arrived, I turned off all the lights, covered the led of the video, covered the little light of the TV and sat in my room with the stereo real loud. And the movie was a child-like dream. I heard many people saying it was a failure, I heard many people saying it was boring... It's all lies. I can't describe the movie by writing what I thought of it. It's difficult to talk about a movie which doesn't talk to the ears but directly to the heart. Here we have the impression that there is another planet... down there. Like in the snake scene. She moves like the snakes do, but the water is so clear that it seems like she and the others around her are floating in a aetherium. And the impression I got during the movie was that sometimes we just have to open ourselves to the sheer experiences of life and let go. This movie plays in our minds like a beautiful dream, and there are few movies that can do it. The love of the director by the ocean has never been so clear. And by making this movie, he somewhat passes on his message and makes us love the ocean also. Full praise to this work of art! Besson never stopped amazing...

Watching this on a big screen one realizes how much effort must go into the "Life on Earth" and subsequent TV documentaries. This looks really mundane and unimpressive, even with the benefits of the cinematic experience. Maybe my expectations were too high, but if it had run another 30 min. I would have been asleep before the credits. There is about 15 min. of impressive footage of sharks and dugongs, but most of the rest is really repetitive and no better than a hundred other underwater wildlife documentaries.

I just would like to say that this film is quite unique. It is really not a Documentary, per se; it is more like a Special Interest Music Video. To try and explain it to someone who has never seen it, I would say it is like a cross between Jacques Cousteau, Fantasia, & an Enigma CD. Keep in mind there is no dialog other than the introduction at the beginning of the film, so it doesn't matter what language you speak to enjoy this. Frankly, the footage speaks for itself. If you want someone telling you what you see with your own eyes, look elsewhere. But if you want something so lulling it could very easily put you in a state of comatose, this is it. Truly, I fell asleep for at least the first 5 times I saw it. This is not a bad thing, I realized, because it helps you unwind if you had an extremely harsh day. More art than movie, this is a film you might see playing at an exhibit in an art museum. But give it a chance. It has some of the most utterly fascinating underwater wildlife footage and cinematography, with an ambient soundtrack throughout that I think fits it perfectly. It is very possible that you will see things here that you will not see elsewhere. The clarity defies underwater footage, at least that I have seen. I really don't know how they got some of the shots they did. And there are underwater animals that you may have never seen before, as well as tons of fish. If aquatic nature were to produce a music video, it would look like this. So in short, this is a keeper, and one I'm sure to have in my collection. Hopefully you will give it a chance and not write it off because it isn't the Disney film of the same name. 10/10