Sharks are our friends. Or, at least, they’re not our enemies, despite what movie and TV portrayals of the underwater predators might have you believe. Rehabilitating the scary, toothy fish’s image is one of the goals of SHARKWATER, a gorgeous new documentary from Canadian director Rob Stewart. The underwater photographer and first-time filmmaker isn’t afraid of sharks; in fact, he plainly loves them. “They are so beautiful, so perfect and so cool” (...). Both Stewart and Watson see SHARKWATER as necessary counter-programming. “Thanks to Steven Spielberg, we have this image of sharks as horrible monsters, although the animal depicted in JAWS wasn’t even a white shark,” Watson says. “That animal’s been extinct for 100 million years, it’s called a megalodon. These are scare stories. But the fact of it is, it’s more dangerous to play golf than to go swimming with sharks. More people die on the golf course from being struck by lightning than [being] attacked by sharks.”

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À la fois document militant et contemplatif, entre quelques scènes violentes et d'autres d'une grande beauté, SHARKWATER de Rob Stewart plaide pour l'urgente sauvegarde des requins. (...) Avec ses airs gamins et son look de beach boy, Rob Stewart incarne ce qu'il défend. Calme et enjoué, il est persuadé que son discours passionnel peut rendre le militantisme attirant. Il veut convaincre les ados, surtout, que vivre de la conservation, c'est comme vivre du rock. Par sa facture léchée, le spectaculaire du monde sous-marin et un ton, justement, cool (narration très personnelle, musique entraînante, banalisation d'un accident qui aurait pu tuer Stewart), SHARKWATER atteindra certainement ce public. Le cinéaste espère ensuite susciter un tel enthousiasme populaire qu'il se traduira par des gestes. "Si ça a marché pour la protection des baleines, ça devrait être possible pour les requins", estime-t-il.

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There's no questioning wildlife photographer and biologist Rob Stewart's passionate commitment, but he's also the principal problem. While the docu's subject is sharks and the indiscriminate killing of them for the lucrative shark fin market, it too often appears to have been hijacked to become about the filmmaker. Stewart's Abercrombie & Fitch surfer-dude look works fine on camera and, yes, he looks hot in a Speedo swimming with sharks. But with his droning monotone, his often prosaic observations and tendency toward self-aggrandizement (every second sentence of the narration starts with "I"), he's an irritating distraction from the main attraction. Which is too bad because Stewart's footage (he shot the extensive underwater segs with David Hannan) is superb, its mesmerizing impact enhanced by a seductive music selection that includes Portishead, Nina Simone, Moby and Aphex Twin as well as Jeff Rona's original compositions. (...) More skilled editing could have maximized the suspense in this material rather than interrupting the flow by lingering over the filmmaker's hospitalization (from a flesh-eating lymphatic system infection). While it's no match in terms of research and depth of detail, most of the elements are here for an eco-upset tale as complex and cautionary as DARWIN'S NIGHTMARE. Stewart just needs to reorganize his information and to step back and shift the focus from himself to his fascinating subject.

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