A new film exploring the vibrant marine life of the North Sea marks veteran underwater cinematographer Peter van Rodijnen’s first foray into producing and narrating. Above all, it is a cameraman’s film. Packed with beautiful, hard-to-capture footage, it showcases two decades of refined craft.
North Sea, Nature Untamed opens with elegiac credits featuring magnified shots of plankton – the most bizarre and delicate of sea creatures. It then establishes itself upfront as a clear homage to underwater pioneer Jacques-Yves Cousteau. A young Rodijnen watches the 1980s TV series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, then strolls down a beach. In the voiceover, Rodijnen embraces Cousteau’s legacy, framing his two decades of underwater filming as a direct continuation of the Frenchman’s work.
True to Cousteau, the ideal narrative for such a film is a “mission,” echoing the global voyages of his flagship, the Calypso. Yet North Sea, Nature Untamed abandons this structure. Instead of tracking the narrator’s journey, the film moves through loosely connected sequences showcasing charismatic species like puffins and basking sharks. Throughout, Rodijnen reflects on his personal connection to the North Sea, framing the film as a voyage to rediscover his vocation.
The return of the nature quest
Rodijnen’s commentary relies heavily on personal hopes and feelings. This style strongly echoes Cousteau, as well as other documentary pioneers like Hans Hass. It recalls an era when nature films, whether oceanic or land-based, were framed as safaris.
Early filmmakers like Armand Denis and Cherry Kearton took audiences on open-ended voyages to marvel at regional wildlife. Structured much like hunting safaris, these films unfolded as quests, keeping viewers hooked on the promise of spotting a lion or a rare rhino. The moment of discovery was a shared experience of wonder between filmmaker and audience. Rodijnen captures that exact excitement when he finally films a rare basking shark.
North Sea, Nature Untamed sits squarely in an early 20th-century tradition, what film scholar Tom Gunning calls “the cinema of attractions”. Rooted in 19th-century European and American amusement parks, this tradition is defined by cinema’s pure ability to display visual wonder, rather than its storytelling capabilities.
Dutch Maritime Productions / Rosalie van der Does
From this perspective, Rodijnen’s film feels like a departure into the past. Despite its impressive visual polish, it contrasts sharply with the BBC Natural History Unit’s output. Consistent success with audiences, and active policy from the BBC to sell their wildlife films in as many countries as possible, turned their films into the gold standard of wildlife filmmaking worldwide.
For 50 years, figures like David Attenborough worked to transform nature films. They pushed the genre away from emotional awe and toward public scientific education. Rather than offering detached, factual commentary, however, Rodijnen’s film embraces the cameraman’s subjective feelings and personal emotions. The film is as much about North Sea Wildlife as it is about Rodijnen’s relation to it.
Personal storytelling in a post-television era
But it would be remiss to only see in North Sea, Nature Untamed a backward-looking nature film. Through its subjective view of nature, this documentary signals a shift in wildlife filmmaking. The authoritative style popularised by the BBC’s Life on Earth (1979) is starting to fade.
Tremendous media changes since the start of the 21st century have reshaped audience tastes and expectations. YouTube, most notably, has displaced television – the primary driver of visual culture since the second world war – as the dominant force in modern media.
The climate crisis has a communications problem. How do we tell stories that move people – not just to fear the future, but to imagine and build a better one? This article is part of Climate Storytelling, a series exploring how arts and science can join forces to spark understanding, hope and action.
YouTube is defined by its participatory culture and personal video style, best seen in the platform’s signature vlog format. While North Sea, Nature Untamed is not a vlog, it uses a similar first-person, direct address. This personal narrative invites viewers to share directly in the filmmaker’s experience.
The film relies on such markers of authenticity as emotional engagement and feelings rather than scientific expertise to gain the audience’s trust and keep them engaged. What seems like an old-fashioned film may actually herald a major shift in wildlife filmmaking – moving away from detached, objective accounts toward personal, subjective stories that reflect broader trends in the media ecosystem.
