"After the Bite" doesn't just capture a problem, but the life of the place that's concerned about it. Meeropol’s editing volleys between many different tones, but they enrich each other-it makes clear how this beach culture can create joy (as seen in a shark-themed burlesque in nearby Provincetown) just as much as fear, evident in a captured moment where Suzy and her crew think they see a fin in the water. The captured moment is as natural as possible, but with Meeropol's work's added context, it is bizarre and jarring. It’s a huge shark, and it conjures equal awe and fear as it slithers past boats (and one freaked-out guy, Noah, who is in a tank and gets real up close). A great white nemesis is finally shown close-up, nibbling on a large whale carcass. (Meeropol’s film has an important stance-it works to treat animals as equals.) In one concise passage after another, “After the Bite” looks at different players in this conundrum, putting a microscope on this community that has been polarized by terror.įor all of the moments in which “After the Bite” works to offer more shark information than “ Jaws,” Meeropol and company do conjure their own special thrilling moment later on. We even get a seal’s POV as a fisherman hawks chum into the blue the camera is thrashed about, bumped into by leathery noses and whiskers. It’s not just through interviews, but with Meeropol's following-around footage, like when we're in Suzy's car as she drives to work or on a boat with a group of fishermen venting about how global warming has altered the fishing scene, for both sharks and their livelihood. “After the Bite” is full of plenty of food for thought about an issue that it magnifies and treats with many distinct POVs. Suzy, a head lifeguard, tells us about a nightmare she has about a shark attack John, a father, and resident of Wellfleet, talks about how he wouldn't let his surfer daughter in the water after Arthur's death, and tells a town hall meeting that humans are not being protected. But the documentary's observant nature is plenty fascinating, as it looks at the many beings who feel the immediacy of this problem and are participants in an ecosystem that doesn’t prioritize a human's safety. Meeropol’s film doesn’t push the tensions in these head-butting perspectives or try to make much of a plot about them. Others thought about where to place guilt: on bad infrastructure, on the ballooning seal population that mixes with human swimmers, and more. Some people wanted to learn how to better live with them, like the scientists who tag sharks and can follow their movement. But it inspired a wealth of various responses. The attack wasn’t a fluke-great white sharks had been seen more often near the beaches in past years. While the themes within “After the Bite” are as lasting as our ticking time on this planet, it focuses them on a tragedy in 2018, when a young man named Arthur Medici was attacked and killed by a shark off a beach in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |