“The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.”
One of the brighter moments of a life lived in the hot suburbs in an isolated Australian state was the refuge of television, and no other man shone brighter in my tweenie life than the French undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau.
Repeats of his seminal 1956 documentary, Le Monde du Silence, The Silent World, thrilled me to all hell. I was their captive as these underwater spacemen, equipped with Cousteau’s aqua-lung, and wearing only little trunks, swam with dolphins and explored shipwrecks.
And, heart-stopping thrills, too, as Cousteau’s boat Calypso rams a pod of sperm whales for close-ups, mortally injuring a baby whale (lacerated by the propeller). They harpoon it to “end its suffering,” shoot it in the head on camera, then massacre attracted sharks with axes, harpoons, and clubs, calling sharks “mortal enemies” while showing a bloody frenzy.
Later, they dynamite near a coral reef to “census” fish by killing and counting floating corpses, destroying habitat in the process, and which Cousteau even notes the irony in narration.
A simpler world!
Now, John John Florence, three time champ and Olympian, has been hailed as the modern incarnation of Jacques Cousteau, after the release of this four-part documentary series, one ep per week for a month, following his Pacific voyaging with wife Lauryn, baby Daz and brothers Nathan and Ivan.
Last week was all Lauryn and Dez, watch here, this week we get a good hunk of the brothers Nathan and Ivan and a left that just don’t give any fool an easy entry.
Beginning one of John John Florence’s movies is a lot like curling up on the sofa with the Bayeux Tapestry. The stories unfold in complicated and minute detail. Each sequence is like a perfect little novel that teems with more characters than you’ll find in a Proustian fever dream.
As Jacques Cousteau said, and which certainly would include John John, “Every explorer I have met has been driven—not coincidentally but quintessentially—by curiosity, by a single-minded, insatiable, and even jubilant need to know.”
Essential.
