User Reviews

This is not an ordinary nature-film or documentary. This threw me off at the start, but with that said, the way the life of this magnificent whale is portrayed is just about perfect. It is estimated that these whales can reach an age of 200-250 years. So the makers of the movie thought it would be interesting to let the movie start at the time of the french revolution with the birth of a whale. We follow the young whale as it nurses from its mother and learns the valuable lesson of swimming under the ice, till the whale becomes "mature" at 25 and man discovers that whales contain many valuable resources. Much of the one-hour movie is spent explaining whaling techniques and this practice is in no way glorified. The computer graphics used to depict whaling is, honestly, not very good. But I have a feeling that this was done somewhat purposely to make it clear that they weren't going to actually kill a whale just to show how it's done. There is, however, footage from other films which show whale-killing. It's important to be aware of this if you are squeamish! The plot in the movie is quite simple: Follow the life of a whale over a span of 200 years. Add the element of man-versus-nature, or maybe nature-versus-man - there is no doubt where the makers have their sympathy. There will probably be arguments that it's difficult to see what's going on underwater, but such are the conditions around the north pole. It's just not going to be a color-fest like the Great Barrier Reef. It is still very much worth watching and you'd have to be very callous not to contemplate the whole issue of natural resources and mans use of them.