It’s hard to believe that a documentary can reduce the viewer to almost tearful identification with a bunch of polyps anchored on the ocean floor singularly lacking in cute faces or limpid eyes. But Orlowski and his team do just that, moving from the Caribbean to the Pacific, and ending up on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – nature’s Manhattan – to show with spectacular underwater camera-work that coral is a living and wondrous thing. Time-lapse photography provides evidence of climate change that even Donald Trump would have trouble denying. Chasing Coral blends thoughtful testimonies from marine biologists, with stories like that of a self-confessed ‘coral nerd’ from landlocked Colorado, to paint an ecocide in the making. And it tells us what we need to do to stop it.
★★★★
