Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Victoria-raised diver demystifies great white in Imax flick

Great White Shark Where: Imax Victoria, Royal B.C. Museum When: Opens Friday, special screenings with free-diver Francois Leduc today at 10 a.m., 6 and 7:30 p.m. Limited seating Info, reservations: 250-953-IMAX, imaxvictoria.
Shark
Victoria-raised William Winram attempts to tag a shark in the Imax documentary Great White Shark.

Great White Shark

Where: Imax Victoria, Royal B.C. Museum

When: Opens Friday, special screenings with free-diver Francois Leduc today at 10 a.m., 6 and 7:30 p.m. Limited seating

Info, reservations: 250-953-IMAX, imaxvictoria.com

Rating: Four stars (out of five)

Sharknado, it isn’t (whew!), and it will never be mistaken for Jaws.

Great White Shark is the opposite of both SyFy’s shamelessly shlocky gorefest about killer sharks who surf into L.A., and Steven Spielberg’s 1975 shark-scare classic.

“Now all our fears are focused on one animal,” narrator Bill Nighy intones in Great White Shark. “But is it the monster we imagined it to be?”

In their Imax documentary, co-directors Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas reiterate the creature we love to fear is smarter than most of us believe, and misunderstood.

Rather than a menacing, bloodthirsty predator, these ancient creatures are no more a monster than a polar bear, a lion or even a human, the movie tells us.

“We are far more dangerous to them than they are to us,” Nighy says. But who could be blamed for thinking otherwise given a recent surge of shark attacks in the news?

“Sharks are not obsessed with or addicted to killing, but they do need to eat,” explains Francois Leduc, a free diver who will provide behind-the-scenes insight at special preview screenings at 10 a.m., 6 and 7:30 p.m. today. “They know that we’re not their normal diet, so they don’t typically eat us.”

Leduc was on location to watch the back of his friend William Winram, a Victoria-raised free diver and conservationist, who swims with sharks in the film. Winram posits that if sharks were as monstrous as they’re made out to be, he wouldn’t be able to do what he does with them undersea.

The film documents excursions with researchers to great-white hot spots off Mexico’s Guadalupe Island, South Africa, Los Angeles and New Zealand, demystifying these demonized creatures along the way.

A highlight is when Winram and other free divers vividly demonstrate their interaction with sharks at close range.

Great White Shark is worthy of the dramatic soundtrack by Brian Eimer and Mike Roberts of Stomp fame when Winram and company abandon the safety of shark cages. Suspense builds during an extended sequence in Guadalupe as they wait for the right moment to tag sharks they’re swimming alongside with tracking devices.

These dreamy, quietly alluring aquatic scenes contrast sharply, and amusingly, with footage of tourists being terrorized by the animatronic shark from Jaws on a Universal Studios tour.

Jazzed up with cool graphics and a percussive score, albeit so dramatic it’s in danger of perpetuating the sharks-as-monsters perception it aims to dispel, Great White Shark is as easy on the eyes as it is on the mind. It’s mercifully short on scientific overkill, focusing instead on the importance of conservation efforts and some breathtaking visuals such as spectacular slow-motion footage of gigantic great whites leaping out of the water and stunning aerial footage of the coastal regions these toothy oceanic wonders call home.

While Great White Shark might not inspire you to try swimming with sharks yourself, it will ensure your next Jaws viewing just won’t be the same.

Proceeds from Leduc’s speaking engagement will benefit the Waterman Project, Winram’s foundation that supports protection of sharks, whales and other large marine species.

mreid@timescolonist.com