Documentary Detective Piecing the evidence together has proven a fascinating detective story.
(Sir David Attenborough)
The documentary genre is, we can say, an unpopular direction among the masses of viewers. This is often due to the dry academic style used by documentary filmmakers, the purely scientific mindset of these people, which is reflected in the presentation of information. However, in the realm of purely factual works there are materials that are easy to perceive: sometimes a writer or director clothed his experience in an artistic form, sometimes information is supplemented by beautiful illustrations or shots, and sometimes topical material is placed in the format of mockumentaries, journalism or TV shows. The Air Force Corporation has been bearing the banner of education for more than half a century, shooting a huge number of films on a variety of topics, strictly adhering to the truth of life, not only in documentaries, but also in film adaptations. American TV channels Discovery and Animal Planet also do not lag behind, broadcasting scientific, technological and zoological programs. The task of a naturalist-televisionist is very difficult, because he must, setting a time frame, convey to the viewer a huge amount of information. Working on a documentary is always at the junction of many disciplines. You should not squat on the level of the plinth and slide into primitivism, but overload with complex science will not benefit, tea, you broadcast for the general public, and you write a monograph for colleagues. It is not surprising that when all the components converge in this Bermuda triangle, you get a small miracle that is pleasant to watch and review, enjoy and educate, relax and get an incentive to new knowledge.
The film “Murderer Medusa”, filmed by the channel “Animal Planet”, is built according to the canons of the detective. Like Spielberg in the famous blockbuster, there is a seaside resort, a killer animal and a scientist eager to find and disarm. But there is no longer the incredible size of the white shark, it is replaced by a tiny invertebrate creature that contains venom stronger than that of the cobra. There are a lot of TV movies about poisonous animals. Especially those who live on land. It is quite another matter when a poisoner is in the ocean and has never been caught on camera, it is difficult to understand the working principle of his poison. The main character of the documentary, Jamie Seymour, works with many unknowns at once. He will have to go a long way, visit the other hemisphere, suffer from the toxin himself. Seymour's work is akin to that of a forensic scientist. A complex puzzle, due to the small size of the animal, its presence in the ocean – a place little studied by people, and complicated by the fact that seaside resorts bring Australia billions of dollars. In the film, he is compared to a wandering preacher. Well, an appropriate analogy, if you remember the total number of appearances of this man on the television screen, a kind of mini-show on the channel National Geographic Wild, and a collaboration with Philip Cousteau, grandson of the famous Jacques-Yves Cousteau, which also participated in Steve Irwin. And the mention in the best-selling “Report on jellyfish” is expensive. In his programs, Seymour attaches sensors to jellyfish, experiments with tubes of different colors placed in an aquarium, finds a fish-stone on the bottom of the ocean and takes poison from it, intersects with a huge sea snake, explains in simple and understandable language the principle of creating antidotes.
In the investigation conducted by the “detective” Seymour, meticulousness and pedantry are very important. Surprisingly, the most dangerous poison belongs to the small size of the jellyfish Irukandji. Its larger relatives are less poisonous, but one has to study them to have an idea of the subject of the work and prove the danger of a stinging animal, disproving assumptions about caisson disease or drowning in victims. Therefore, the viewer will follow the professor to the beaches of North Queensland - to the Great Barrier Reef, to Palau - to the salt lake with jellyfish, to Hawaii. He will see the life cycle of the jellyfish in computer animation and research work aimed at studying the migrations of jellyfish, will dive into reservoirs to catch a miniature killer, and learn how terrible the suffering of victims of Irukandji for whom there is no specific treatment. The film, as befits a good documentary, touches on oceanology, biology, toxicology. And, since the investigation is not in the fiction of the writer, but in reality, it will not end with the finding of a jellyfish, there will be no exciting chases and bright explosions. Jamie Seymour, after catching the killer, puts him in a round aquarium, and this completes only one stage of a long, difficult journey. To find an antidote, you need to catch a lot of these tiny stinging creatures, spend years and decades researching the poison. And while putting a jellyfish in captivity is a very important milestone in the investigation, there is still work to do and work on. The development of a new drug formula, chemical studies, laboratory and preclinical trials can become the plot for new documentaries. I hope that someday they will be removed.